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REPUTATION 



REPUTATION: b v 

J !. i 

ELINOR MORDA UNT: Author of 

*« 

“The Park Wall,” “Laura Creichton” “The Family“Alas, 
That Spring“The Little Soul,” etc. :: :: 



BOSTON 

SMALL , MAYNARD Sp COMPANY 

PUBLISHERS 



rzs 



Copyright, 1924 

By SMALL, MAYNARD & COMPANY 

(incorporated) 


• • 
« » « 


Printed in the United States of America 

BOUKD BY THE BOSTON BOOKBINDING COMPANY 
CAMBRIDGE, MASS. 


“That bubble reputation.” 

—Shakespeare. 


“My reputation, oh, my reputation!” 

—“The Gay Lord Quex.” 



PRELUDE 


It is a waste of truisms, which may come in useful at 
times, to say that a straw will show which way the wind 
blows; for it is just as true, and far more stimulating to 
the imagination, to assert the contrary: that it is the merest 
straws which, most often, divert the winds of human 
destiny, from gentle zephyrs to destructive cyclones or 
something like them. 

Individuals, destinies, however small—and what destiny 
is really small to its owner? the ego of each visualising it¬ 
self as the centre of the universe—are influenced in the 
same way: the whole by the fraction, the lifetime by the 
moment: a glance, a word, the wrong sort of silence, a 
boring wet day, a cold in the head, and all calculation is 
put to naught, however much we may tempt fate by say¬ 
ing, as we so often do say: ‘ ‘ But I could never do a thing 

like that!” “I would never allow a like thing that,’’ even, 
“No one would ever dare to suggest such a thing to me.” 

So here it is, the prelude, which was also the end, in a 
nutshell. If George Henry Yilliers de Courcy, eighth 
Marquess of Bladgen, had not—and it was not usual to 
him, merely the discomfort of his position, the height of his 
collar—slept with his mouth open, if he had not, quite 
suddenly, reverted to a boyish trick of muttering in his 
sleep murmuring altogether the wrong name, not even 
that of his wife—“Chrissie, you ... you!” using that 
word which is by rights applied to the female of the 
canine species, and that not in altogether polite society 
either, at least in those days, and with a note of admiring 
affection, too, the whole course of this story of Claudia 
Waring’s life would have been different. I do not say 
better, for take it all in all there is very little better or 


PRELUDE 


worse in life as a whole, and what one loses on the swings 
one, almost inevitably, makes up for on the roundabouts, 
but different. 

Curiously enough it was not the name or the word itself 
which upset Claudia; nor was it altogether the intonation— 
for she had a queer sort of tolerance, even for those days, 
and brought up as she was; besides there was always that 
Victorian “Gentlemen are different,” not allowed to them 
now—which decided her with such sudden completeness 
upon her next move, so much as the fact of her hero, her 
demi-god, that “demi” standing for the doubt which was 
really always there at the back of her mind, sleeping at all; 
above all else sleeping with his mouth open. 

“He would not have slept yesterday,” she thought, 
feeling hurt, as well as repelled by the sudden ugliness of 
oblivion, breaking up the florid good looks of a very 
presentable gentleman; though she was far too unsophisti¬ 
cated for the proper deduction: “He is sure of me now 
and it is different.” 

But this is not at all the sort of way to begin a history, 
a history more than a story; a history founded, as are 
most histories, upon a series of misapprehensions. 


PART I 


October, 1882 



REPUTATION 


CHAPTER I 

Claudia Waring had always possessed a queer and 
humorous faculty for picturing circumstances, periods of 
time, groups of people, as things. Years later, looking 
back upon her home life, her surroundings as a girl, it 
all struck her as being, in its smooth, drabbish luxury, 
like an over-solid chocolate blanc-mange, with too much 
cornflour and not quite enough chocolate; that sort which 
developes a species of hard skin over it after it has been 
made for a short time. 

She was the daughter of a parson-squire, a rural dean; 
very well off and very dull, with that solid and yet not 
unvindictive dullness of order which felt itself to be 
waning, even so far back as the early eighties. Claudia 
herself was born in eighteen hundred and sixty-four—the 
year of our Lord, as one is bound to say in speaking of a 
time when people still put D.Y. at the end of any letter 
containing plans for the future. 

There was a tea-party on at the Rectory; the sort of tea- 
party which follows upon a sewing party, with the humbler 
members entertained in a plainer way, with unsugared 
cakes, in the servants’ hall; and they were all, as usual, 
when he was anywhere in the neighbourhood, talking about 
the Marquess of Blagden. They did not approve of him; 
save for one or two of them they did not know him, even 
by sight, and yet they could no more help talking of him 
than English people can help talking of the weather, how¬ 
ever bad; perhaps for this very reason, that he held the 
same quality of contrariness. 

3 


4 


REPUTATION 


“They say that he is terribly wild, and going from bad 
to worse. Really I don’t know what our aristocracy is 
coming to!” 

“They say, pray who says?” It was Mrs. Saunders 
who bit off the question, as one bites a thread. Not that 
she had any objection to gossip, or held any sort of brief 
for Lord Blagden; merely because she felt that Miss Fair 
should not take the liberty of discussing any person so 
far above her. It was not as though she had anything 
new to tell; she would have hated her if she had. 

“Oh well, everyone’s talking of it. So handsome, but 
quite shocking. Not that I mind a little wildness in gentle¬ 
men myself, most people are far too tame for my taste.” 
Miss Fair spoke with dashing boldness, tossed an equine 
head as if she herself were ready for any sort of moral or 
immoral leap. “Though from what I hear I would not 
like to think of any young girl I was interested in being in 

service at the Hall—there is such a thing as- Oh, well, 

it’s a matter of history, so there can be nothing very dread¬ 
ful in mentioning it among other ladies—Seignioral 
Rights.” She gave a short, half defiant, half triumphant 
laugh, as at some impropriety—really they did want rous¬ 
ing up, broadening a little, all these dowdies and tabbies, 
as her father had called them. 

“Dear, dear, and only yesterday I got that pretty little 
Minnie Davies a place at the Hall, never thinking—why, 
it must be three years since his lordship was there, and 
then only for a few days for the election, and the house¬ 
keeper does train young girls so nicely,” murmured Mrs. 
Phillpots anxiously. 

‘ ‘ I could almost wish he hadn’t come back at all; though 
it seems dreadful to say that about a gentleman of his po¬ 
sition, and his own place and all,” said Mrs. Waring, warm¬ 
ing the teacups in a bowl of hot water. “And, though 
I’m not sure if I ought to say so, I know that my husband 
feels that it isn’t—well, quite the best thing for the village. 
One has to be so much on one’s guard against any sort of 



5 


REPUTATION 

bad example, particularly with the boys. Really, there’s 
nothing they don’t pick up in these days; they seem to 
have lost all idea of the distinctions of class.” 

In picking up things that they ought to leave to their 
betters; is that what you mean?” Miss Fair pounced with 
her neighing laugh, for nothing pleased her better than 
to catch Mrs. Waring out in this fashion. 

‘ 4 Well, of course we all know that a gentleman of Lord 
Blagden’s position must have greater temptations and all 
that, than other people.” 

The Rector’s wife was still vague, but she spoke with a 
certain air of offended dignity, conscious of Miss Fair’s 
ill-bred triumph—in her own drawing-room, too. But 
then: 4 ‘What can you expect from a pig but a grunt?” 
That was what Claudia had said of her, with her fine young 
scorn, and been rebuked for it too; but after all Claudia 
was right, as she so often was. When one felt indolent and 
sweet tempered, and how often the two things go together, 
Claudia jarred; but in moments of irritation the things 
she said had a way of coming back to one, suiting the oc¬ 
casion. 

4 4 Oh, well, I suppose all the aristocracy are tarred with 
much the same brush; and no wonder, with every sort of 
excuse made for them.” 

4 4 Oh, Miss Fair! How can you say such a thing ? Only 
think of the Duke,” protested Mrs. Phillpots, almost 
tearfully; for she could no more leave off tears than she 
could leave off crepe, the monumental wreaths which 
she hung round the memory of that late husband who 
had led her such a life of it, as the whole village 
knew. 

44 Whoever does think of a man over ninety? We mayn’t 
be—well—in our first youth, but all the same, which of us 
can remember His Grace as a young man? And people 
say— Oh well, it isn’t only what they say!” 

4 4 There is always a certain amount of not very pleasant 
gossip hanging about the name of any gentleman of high 


6 


REPUTATION 


position in the world, and I think that the only course for 
us ladies is to take no notice of such things.” 

It was Mrs. Waring who spoke, a little stiffly, suddenly 
mindful of her husband’s strictures against anything like 
gossip in the Rectory drawing-room; the marital bedcham¬ 
ber was a different affair altogether. Besides, Miss Fair 
rubbed her up the wrong way as she did everyone else. 
“I’m sure no one could be more universally respected than 
the dear Duke-” 

“The dear Duke!” repeated Miss Fair rudely. “Oh, 
well, of course, he is a Duke, and that makes all the differ¬ 
ence, I suppose. But even you, dear Mrs. Waring, with 
all your charity, can’t pretend that you’ve not heard the 
old story of the lady’s maid married off in such a hurry 
to the head woodman; with that man Knowles and all, sup¬ 
posedly their son, only a year younger than Lord Blagden 
and the two of them as like as two peas.—Why, I came 
across the fellow in the Long Wood yesterday, and it gave 
me quite a start; I declare I only just saved myself from 
bowing. ’ ’ 

“I didn’t know that you were acquainted with his lord- 
ship,” broke in Mrs. Phillpots, with one of the sudden ag¬ 
gressive bleats by which she occasionally asserted herself; 
then dropped to silence again, sucking the crepe hem of 
her widow’s veil. 

“Well, doesn’t everyone know him, more or less?” Miss 
Fair tossed her head, glancing round defiantly. “Any¬ 
how, I, for one, should think it was only civil to bow to a 
gentleman in his own woods. Though I’m sure I don’t 
pretend to know what is and what isn’t the proper thing, 
for I wasn’t brought up with the aristocracy and I must 
say I’m glad I wasn’t every time I open the paper and 
read about them and their goings on, divorces and ac¬ 
tresses, and what not! As for this Lord Blagden, or what¬ 
ever he calls himself”—it was a trick of hers to talk of 
people socially above her in this fashion, with a “what¬ 
ever he calls himself”—“I’m sure if he and that man 



REPUTATION 


7 


Knowles were to change clothes there wouldn’t be a pin 
to choose between them.” 

“Miss Fair! Miss Fair! Really, I think we’ve had 
enough of this,” interposed Mrs. Waring, her smooth 
round face, the skin as fine as that of a young girl, flush¬ 
ing. Such a dreadful thing to say; only imagine Lord 
Blagden changing clothes with a working man,” was how 
she put it to her husband later on, repeating fragments of 
that afternoon’s conversation; adding that, little as she ap¬ 
proved of his lordship herself, she really would put that 
beyond him; for she had a curious faculty for missing the 
essentials in speech or life. “Changing clothes with a 
common working man; such a horrid, vulgar sort of no¬ 
tion!” 

‘ ‘ There are certain things in life which are best left un¬ 
commented upon,” she went on now, with some dignity; 
“and, after all, we cannot expect gentlemen to he quite 
the same in certain matters as we ladies, however much we 
may look up to them.” 

“Well, I never! For shame—really—really, Mrs. War¬ 
ing!” Miss Fair’s voice was playful, her chains and 
bangles rattled. For one moment she broke off, with a 
strident laugh, while the rest of the party turned and 
looked at her as though she had been some strange animal; 
then began again: “I like that—you to say that— 4 we 
can’t expect gentlemen to be the same, ’ with the Rector and 
all! Oh, really, fie, fie!” 

“You forget that my husband is a clergyman.” Mrs. 
Waring took refuge in the unanswerable answer, her smooth 
face pink with anger, turning aside, very markedly, to 
speak to Mrs. Phillpots. Really, that Fair woman was be¬ 
yond words. This was what came of trying to be nice to 
a person who had come from goodness knows where, was 
of no sort of class whatever. “An iron founder,” that’s 
what she said her father was, and pray where was the dif¬ 
ference between an iron founder and an iron-monger ? 
And even so, “iron founder!” What was that Claudia 


8 


REPUTATION 


had said about the daughter spending her time picking 
over the rubbish-tins that Thomas, her father, had made ? ’’ 

Anyhow, there was nothing in her—Mrs. Waring’s—re¬ 
mark that could possibly necessitate Miss Fair taking off 
her hat and holding it up in front of her face, under the 
playful pretence of hiding her blushes. Merely that gen¬ 
tlemen were different. Well, everyone knew that gentle¬ 
men were different. It would not have entered her head 
to prove her case by any citation of the divorce laws, for 
that was the sort of thing which really nice people never 
so much as thought of; but there it was, the acknowledged 
fact, and everything went to prove it. For instance, there 
was nothing so very dreadful in a young man of her own 
class kissing a pretty housemaid, while it was quite un¬ 
thinkable for any girl, even the least nice, to kiss, or be 
kissed by, a waiter. In any case nothing could excuse that 
vulgar personality—or was it a joke?—'The Rector and 
all!” 

"Won't you turn back your veil, Mrs. Phillpots, and try 
one of the little scones while they are really hot, and you 
too, Mrs. Saunders and Miss Ogelvie? And ... oh, here 
is Claudia!” She broke off with a breath of relief; 
though, properly speaking, it was Francie, too ; who came 
into the room, and Francie was the elder, and married, and 
spoken of as never having given anyone any trouble, while 
Claudia was entirely different in this, as in every other 
way. 

All the same it was to Claudia that she turned in any 
moment of difficulty, and maybe her most common plaint, 

‘ ‘ I never can understand Claudia, she is so entirely differ¬ 
ent to me,” with the occasional addition of—though this 
was for the family alone—"there’s something,—well, al¬ 
most like a trace of coarseness about Claudia,” explained 
this; for do we not all turn, in our most difficult moments, 
to something altogether alien to ourselves?” 

"Claudia dear, do hand round the cakes, and give Mrs. 
Fielden that little stool to put her cup on—it’s so awkward 


REPUTATION 


9 


holding it. ‘A pretty little stool V Yes, isn't it, quite a 
common little stool, too; but Gertie, who's really quite 
clever at that sort of thing, enamelled it and painted it, 
with those dear little birds, and the apple blossom and all, 
and now no one would know what it really was. Though, 
of course, it is a little better made than the ordinary stools, 
which are actually used for milking." 

Mrs. Fielden bent over the stool, raising her cup a little 
to look at it the better. “How sweetly pretty! And 
those dear little robins; so beautifully done, so like life, 
one would recognise them anywhere!" 

“Bullfinches," said Claudia shortly, and moved towards 
Miss Fair, holding out the plate of cakes as though it were 
a pistol. 

“Now I wonder if I am to be allowed to have one?" 
Miss Fair stuck out her lower jaw in a grimace which made 
her look more like an over-toothed cab-horse than ever and 
picked out the only cake with chocolate on it. “I've been 
a naughty girl as usual, you know. You and I are a pretty 
pair, always getting ourselves into hot water, eh, Claudia ?'' 
she added, her upper lip wrinkling traversely as she smiled, 
while the girl's half veiled eyes filled with contempt over 
the assumption of equality. “She's always talking about 
getting into hot water. If only she would get into it 
with soap and a scrubbing brush!" That's what Claudia 
said in the semi-privacy of her own bedroom shared with 
“poor Francie" now that Francie's husband was abroad. 

Having supplied the needs of the entire party, and more 
—for Mrs. Phillpots voiced the general feeling when she 
complained to little Miss Ogelvie later on walking home 
from the Rectory: ‘* Hot cakes, and those sweet things al¬ 

ways give me the most excruciating indigestion, but 
Claudia Waring pokes them under my nose so that I 
daren’t even hint at bread-and-butter"—the girl went and 
stood by the decorated fireplace, with one foot hooked up 
on the fender behind her; while her mother, wishing that 
she would try to be a little more ladylike, almost wished 


10 


REPUTATION 


that she had kept away, as one might do with a deity evoked 
in moments of stress and then altogether in the way in a 
domesticated household; forgetful of the fashion in which 
her daughter had fulfilled her function in diverting the 
stream of talk well away from the enormities of Lord Blag- 
den; those differences between ladies and gentlemen to 
which it was not thought of applying the words “sex,” a 
word, indeed, never so much as heard in those days when 
a cat was “she” and a dog “he”; a dog “a dog” and a 
bitch “a lady dog,” and love matrimony; for—“You must 
never allow yeurself to begin to care for a man until he 
has proposed to you,” was the commandment laid down to 
young girls—with obedience and compliance thrown in; 
and everything else the sheer dreadfulness of “those sort 
of people.” 

Apart from this there were two sorts of wickedness; the 
wickedness of those people w T ho were really wicked, and 
the social sin of those who were “peculiar.” 

The old Duke had once said of Claudia that if Mrs. 
Waring did not look out, that girl of hers would commit 
the unpardonable sin of originality. And that was two 
years ago when he had driven over to see the Rector about 
some business, in his enormous barouche with its peculiarly 
arrogant-looking horses—“the sort of horses one thinks of 
when one reads of the chariots of God and the horses 
thereof,” as Claudia herself put it, irreverently enough— 
and was sitting throned mid his cushions, with the entire 
Waring family gathered together upon the Rectory steps. 
He had even added: “The girl with that don’t-care-a- 
damn look, ’ ’ to make sure of his aim; with the sly eye of an 
aged libertine glancing round a rather noble nose at 
Claudia, seated sideways on the parapet of the steps, one 
leg dangling, tossing a small leather ball, the plaything of 
the hour, on the end of a long piece of fine elastic. 

The saying had rankled in Mrs. Waring’s mind. If a 
girl was once “peculiar,” one never knew what might fol¬ 
low; for it was certainly the peculiar people who did the 


REPUTATION 


11 


more than peculiar things, and no doubt about it Claudia 
was—well, not exactly like other people, as they were 
known in the county. 

This trick of standing instead of sitting, almost like a 
man, for instance. Of course a girl ought to be erect, but 
there was something verging upon immodesty in the set of 
Claudia’s shoulders, the frank, rather scornful directness 
of her gaze. Even her dress, the over-long pleated skirt, 
the heavy pleated polonaise, the tight bodice, with its com¬ 
pact line of small buttons down the front, and high stif¬ 
fened collar of the same material topped by a line of still 
stiffer white, was, somehow or other, incapable of reducing 
her to the dull every-day level of altogether “niceness.” 

Then there was her hair. Fringes were the fashion, so 
much the fashion that a girl looked bare, almost indecent, 
without one. But Claudia hated fringes, and in any 
matter which involved no actual question of right and 
wrong it seemed easier to give way to her; while after all 
it did not matter so very much, for the girl’s forehead was 
low, actually low, in a family with foreheads like babies’ 
tombstones. “I’m sure I don’t know who she takes after; 
it must be someone on your side of the family,” was what 
Mrs. Waring would say to her husband, quite depressed by 
Claudia’s forehead; no whit comforted by the fact that it 
was very broad and white, while her smooth dark hair grew 
in a widow’s peak at either side, not only relieving it, but 
displaying—with that effect of pride which hung about 
everything appertaining to her—the full beauty of her eye¬ 
brows, so delicately curved as to seem, at first sight, almost 
straight above her brown eyes: golden brown and clear as 
a stream, startlingly bright in moments of animation, 
sullen now, and half closed beneath their white lids. 

‘ ‘ The same old lot, ’ ’ she was thinking, not worth so much 
as a glance wasted upon them. 4 ‘You really ought to learn 
to look people in the face, Claudia,” was what her mother 
said. And then again, likely enough just after: “Claudia, 

I wish you wouldn’t stare at people in that odd sort of 


12 


REPUTATION 


fashion; it does make you look so peculiar!” For once 
really interested, Claudia did stare, and no mistake about 
it, either.—But these people, pheugh! She knew them all 
by heart, the sort of people who went to sewing parties and 
mothers’ meetings; so different from the people one saw at 
the meets, so beautifully groomed and shining, with a rather 
nice sort of well-conditioned hardness, like their horses. 

She had declared to Francie, and she had rather an ugly 
way of saying those sort of things, with her small, faintly 
aquiline nose in the air, that she would know the smell of 
a sewing party if she came across it in heaven; that raw 
calico smell all mixed up with people’s best clothes, which 
makes it just a little like church, but not quite the same; 
and, oh, ever so different to the mothers’ meetings, all 
warm flannel and rather sour milk. 

“I bet you I know the smell of every cottage in the 
village, and every Rectory from Oxford to Stow-on-the- 
Wold, the smell of chapel people and the smell of church 
people. I could go through them blindfold.” 

“Well, anyhow there’s one thing you don’t know, and 
that is what you smell like yourself,” retorted Francie; 
who was capable of a counter retort at rare intervals, and 
when her own feelings were in no way involved, for then 
she wept. 

“Oh, don’t I, though? Who should know if I don’t? 
Like a nice, well-bred horse,” cried Claudia, who was never 
at a loss for an answer, and did not care what it was either; 
would say the most shocking things rather than be beaten, 
give anyone else the last word. “My goodness! I ought 
to know, for I perfectly remember being a Centaur in my 
last life—flash chestnut, with one white stocking.” 

“Claudia, how can you! Why, that was ages back in 
the old Greek days; and it wasn’t real either, only 
mythology.” 

‘ ‘ Only mythology—only mythology! Isn’t that just like 
you? Why, all religions are mythologies.” 

* * Claudia! ’ ’ 


13 


REPUTATION 

11 * Claudia!’ 1 Claudia!’ For goodness sake don’t go on 
bleating Claudia like that! Anyhow, how can you know 
Centaurs weren’t real; you were never one yourself.— 
What were you, I wonder. A white mouse?” 

“Claudia, really you are—” began Francie, flushed and 
hurt; but her sister broke in upon her, chanting mockingly: 

‘ ‘ I am, I am, I am; and I was, I was, I was—a Centaur 
—a noble Centaur!” 

“There never were any, I tell you. Anyhow, where’s 
the sense of saying that you were ever anything before 
you were born?” persisted Francie in her literal way. 

“I like that. Who would know if I didn’t? And what 
right have you to say that there were never any Centaurs? 
How could people possibly imagine them if there weren’t 
—things like that, too lovely to be just invented—that’s 
what I’d like to know?” 

“Well, anyhow, they were only men, the half of them 
that wasn’t horse. Whoever heard of a female Centaur?” 

“Rot! If you didn’t hear of them it was only because 
they were taken for granted—I ought to know if anyone 
does, considering that I was one. We talk of men, don’t 
we? The Bible talks of men w r hen it means men and 
women. It was the same way with us Centaurs—foals 
and mares—stallions ” 

“Claudia!” 

“All Centaurs—lovely, flowing-tailed Centaurs.” 

“Oh, you’re mad. Do stop it now and get undressed.” 

But the words slid past Claudia. Erect with shining 
eyes, her left foot, what she would have called her “near 
fore”—for she was like that, launching off upon the most 
extravagant fancies, beating herself up into a condition 
where she more than half believed them, though never al¬ 
together—pawing the ground. 

“Oh, don’t I remember it, just:— 

‘The Centaurs 
In the upper glens 


14 


REPUTATION 


Of Pelion, in the streams 
Where red-berried ashes fringe 
The clear brown shallow pools; 

With steaming flanks, and heads, 

Rear’d proudly, snuffing 
The mountain wind.’ 

. . The wind and the smell of the rain; wet sweetbriar, 
and one’s own wet tail slashing one’s side; the ripples 
round one’s pasterns, and-” 

* ‘ Claudia, Claudia, stop it.—Where on earth did you get 
it, anyhow?” 

‘‘That? Oh, that’s Matthew Arnold, most of it at 
least, and quite, quite proper: 

With steaming flanks , and heads, 

Rear’d proudly-’ 

Look here—a Centauress! See me as a Centauress.” 

They were undressing. She had got down to nothing 
more than a rather outgrown chemise—and that was an¬ 
other of Claudia’s faults, she never would undress in the 
orthodox way, slipping off her clothes under the shelter of 
her night-gown—all the same she began to prance and 
jump with astounding agility. 

“I don’t know what you think of yourself,” said Fran- 
cie, very crossly; “but I do know one thing, and that is 
that Mama’s 'quite right when she says she believes you 
don’t so much as know the meaning of the word decency— 
hopping about with next to nothing on. ’ ’ 

“Oh, that’s what she says, does she?” Claudia came to 
a sudden pause, rigid and alert. 

“Well, if not exactly that—” muttered Francie, who 
was always hedging, one way or another. 

“Oh, don’t be ‘an ass,’ Francie! She said that—she did 
say it, eh?” Claudia’s tone was low, and so dangerous 
that Francie, who knew she had no business to repeat 
things, grew scared. 



REPUTATION 


15 


‘‘Well, she-” 

‘ ‘ Oh, so she did say it, did she ? I like that; I must say 
I like that! And from a married woman, too! ’ ’ 

“Claudia, to speak of our own mother like that!” 

“Well, isn’t she married? And if she’s married, where’s 
the harm of speaking of her as a married woman, the same 
as any other woman? After all, if she wasn’t married 
where should we be, eh?” 

“I shan’t listen to you, you’re perfectly revolting! And 
please be quiet now, for I want to say my prayers,” said 
Francie; and suiting her action to her words, knelt down 
by her bed, bending forward with her head in her hands, 
the whole effect of fingers tightly pressed in either ear; 
not altogether tightly, though, for that was the worst of 
Claudia; one couldn’t help wanting to hear the things she 
had to say, however dreadful they might be. 

“No sense of decency. Oh, yes, I like that. Just be¬ 
cause I fool about in my chemise in front of my own sister. 
—Lord! when one thinks of all the queer things which 
must happen to people when they’re married, poked away 
in the same- room. Now that is indecent, if you like.” 

But this was too much, even for Francie, and she flung 
to her feet. “Claudia!” 

“I thought you were saying your prayers with your 
fingers in your ears.” 

“How is it possible for me to say my prayers, or do any¬ 
thing else either while you are talking in that perfectly 
disgusting way? I shall go and sleep with Gertrude; I 
can’t stand this!” cried Francie, with the passion of the 
white mouse she had been likened to; struggling into her 
dressing-gown with trembling hands, groping for her slip¬ 
pers under the bed; the tears running down her face, stead¬ 
fastly averted from her sister; moving all sideways like 
a crab towards the door, her dressing-gown dragged over 
her shoulders, for one sleeve was inside out and she simply 
could not grapple with it. “To say a thing like that!” 

“I don’t see anything dreadful about it,” retorted 




16 


REPUTATION 


Claudia. “Anyhow, you ought to know. You wouldn’t 
be going to have a baby, if you didn’t.” 

She shouted the words after Francie who was half out 
of the door, and laughed loudly as the door slammed to, 
the sort of laugh she liked to think of as a villain’s; 
walked up and down the room several times humming to 
herself, her head in the air; then, sitting down in front of 
her dressing-table, propped her chin in her hands, re¬ 
marked that she wondered what on earth made her behave 
like a beast in the way she did, stared at herself in the glass 
for a good minute, as though seeking for some answer to 
her riddle, and began to cry. 

After a moment or two she heard someone creep into the 
room; caught the sound of a gentle snuffling. 

“I had to come back for a handkerchief,” muttered 
Francie, and Claudia knew what had happened. 

Gertrude, who was a year older than “poor Francie,” 
had been engaged with her complicated system of religious 
exercises—it was whispered in the family that Gertie 
went through the whole of the evening service with the 
addition of the litany in her own room every night—and 
had not welcomed the advent of her sister. If she had 
done, why on earth couldn’t she have lent her a handker¬ 
chief ? She was a selfish pig, anyhow; would never consent 
to share her room with anyone because they “breathed 
loud” while she was saying her prayers; enwrapping her¬ 
self in her religion at all the difficult moments of life, as 
a woman with a mackintosh will enwrap herself; open her 
umbrella too, and watch her unprotected sisters soak to the 
skin. 

It was the moment for a display of triumph on Claudia’s 
part, but she did not seize it—and therein lay her special 
weakness, this letting slip of the very opportunity for 
striking home—only began to cry the more with an: 

“Oh, Francie—I say, I am a beast—I don’t know what 
makes me such a beast!” 

They were in each other’s arms in a moment at this, for 


REPUTATION 17 

there was no trace of malice in poor little Franeie Stevens, 
who was continually trying to remember to keep things up 
and failing. 

_ "1^ don’t believe she really could be praying all that 
time, she said at last, and there was no need to mention 
any names. “I was in the room for five minutes at least, 
and she must have known that I was crying, but she never 
even stirred. The fact of the matter is that she’s never 
forgiven me for marrying Frankie. As if Frankie would 
ever have looked at her, even if there had been no me. He 
hates those great hard sorts of girls; he’s told me so; he’s 
so frightfully sensitive to that sort of thing.” 

Claudia wondered how anyone could be bored to look 
at Frankie himself a second time, anyhow. But for once 
she kept her thoughts to herself, and only said: 

“You might have told me about the baby, Franeie. 
That’s what made me so mad.” 

“I wanted to, but Mama said I mustn’t. She said you 
would be sure to try and ferret it out.” “Ferret it out” 
was the expression in use for the display of any desire for 
knowledge of those things of really more importance than 
the names of the minor prophets, or Roman emperors, 
things upon which life itself really depended. “She said 
that girls of your age oughtn’t to know anything about 
such things.” 

‘ 4 1 like that! When it’s I who’ve held your head every 
morning, and brought you your breakfast in bed!” cried 
Claudia indignantly. 

“Well, anyhow I’m glad you know now.” Franeie 
squeezed her arm, tearful and smiling, overflowing with 
affection. “I’d call it after you, Claudia, if it’s a girl, 
only Frankie wants it to be called Margaret after his 
mother.—I know, I’ll call it Margaret Claudia, or Claudia 
Margaret.” 

“Franeie, you don’t mean to say that you’ve gone and 
told Mr. Stevens, when you never told me?” Claudia flung 
round, staring: “When you’ve known me all your life 


18 


REPUTATION 


—at least all excepting the first two and a half years, be¬ 
fore I was born—to go and tell a comparative stranger a 
thing like that, shutting me out! Well, if that doesn’t 
beat everything! ’ ’ 

“Of course I had to tell him—and I do wish you 
wouldn’t call him Mr. Stevens, Claudia; he does hate it 
so.—Of course he had to know.” 

“Why had he got to know, I’d like to know? Tell me 
that, now! What had it got to do with him?” 

“Well, it will be his baby as much as mine, as he’s my 
husband, you silly!” 

“Lord, so he is! I’m always forgetting; I simply can’t 
think of him as anything but one of father’s curates. It’s 
exactly the same with Maude’s husband; though I don’t 
mind about that, I never cared twopence for Maude! 
Heavens! To think that there’s only two of us who have 
married and both curates! I wish Gertie would make 
haste and get off with little Ashton-” 

“Why, Mr. Ashton’s over six foot.” 

“Yes, I know, but all curates are little, somehow or 
other, and he’s the littlest of the lot. Anyhow I’d be 
thankful to see him married to old Gertie—married and 
done for, so that the whole thing’s over, once and for all. 
It gives me cold shivers down my back when I think of the 
way things run in threes.” 

“I think it rather beastly of you to talk like that about 
curates! ’ ’ 

“Oh, but Frankie’s different,” cried Claudia, overcome 
by a sudden wave of generosity, hugging her sister; though 
even then she could not refrain from remarking that any¬ 
one could see by Frankie’s legs that he was cut out to be a 
bishop; with an inward giggle at the thought of those 
meagre and wavering shanks, all buttoned up in black 
cloth, the whole person of that brother-in-law, of whom 
everyone remarked that he was ‘ ‘ so gentlemanly, ’ ’ for the 
simple reason that they could find nothing else to say, 



REPUTATION 


19 


edging away from the more obvious and altogether damn¬ 
ing * ‘harmless.’ ' 

But Francie was blissfully oblivious of the satire in her 
sister's words; murmuring in her complacent little voice, 
for she was the oddest mixture of complacency and 
timidity: 

“That's what we really thought, though, of course, we 
couldn't say so to anybody. And, of course, that isn’t the 
reason Frankie took his appointment in East Africa—he 
just went where he was called. He felt that so strongly, 
the call I mean. But, of course, things like that do lead 
to—well, Colonial bishoprics, anyhow. And directly I get 
better after baby's born, and can go out and join him, I 
do feel, so very strongly”—that was one of Francie's ex¬ 
pressions—-‘I do feel so very strongly,' ‘I do think so very 
strongly'—poor little Francie!—“that I shall be of real 
use to him in-" 

She broke off at the sound of a loud banging on the 
wall. 

“I do wish you two would stop talking; you've never 
been quiet for a moment all the time I've been trying to 
say my prayers,” cried Gertrude, in her patiently ex¬ 
asperated voice; and Francie whispered: 

“Come into my bed, Claudia, then we can plan things 
and talk about the baby, without her hearing us. I don’t 
want to be un-Christian, and of course she's our sister; but 
she is horrid, isn’t she?” 

“I hate her,” said Claudia, “but I won’t come into your 
bed, for I hate other people's beds almost as badly! I'll 
just drag mine close up to yours and you can whisper as 
much as ever you like. Only pinch me if I go to sleep.” 

“Oh, but I couldn’t disturb you.” 

“You won’t disturb me. I don't want to go to sleep. 

I'd much rather stay awake. I've such heaps and heaps of 
things to think of.” 

All this had been more than two months before, and the 


20 


REPUTATION 


baby bad not arrived by the day of the sewing party. 
The ladies of the village wondered that Mrs. Waring cared 
to keep her married daughter in the house in her condition. 
“It really doesn’t seem quite nice, with young girls about, 
and all,” that’s what they said, as though Francie were 
suffering from some sort of infectious disease; while she 
herself was the only one who failed to realise that she was 
daily growing to look more and more what they described 
as “a perfect sight.” 

As to the women of the village, apart from the ladies, 
they took the whole thing entirely for granted; counted 
the months, opined that she must be near her time, that it 
looked as though it might be twins, and liked her better 
than they had ever liked her before. 

An d twins they were, born three days after the sewing 
party, when Miss Fair had remarked, ‘ ‘ Really how she has 
the face to show herself,”—a boy and girl who lived two 
or three hours, and then just wilted away out of life. 

“Such a beastly waste!” said Claudia, trying to be hard, 
for the simple reason that she was too disappointed for 
words. Maudie had two children; but it was Francie’s 
baby she wanted, for she loved Francie, who seemed in 
some way like her own child, though she was two and a 
half years the elder. Besides, Francie would have to go 
out to Africa to her husband, and there would have been 
a chance of keeping the baby to herself. “Just like Fran¬ 
cie and Frankie, to have two miserable little attempts at a 
baby, instead of one really sound one, just like God too, 
to go and fool Francie like that. He wouldn’t have done 
it with Maude, just because she’s strong, and doesn’t care 
much one way or another. Poor little Francie, how any¬ 
one could have the heart!” 

She was overflowing with a passionate pity and affec¬ 
tion for her sister—“that poor little Francie.” All the 
same, when she was at last allowed to see her she was 
conscious of a curious and quite temporary sense of awe; 
for this minute, white-faced woman, lying back among the 


21 


REPUTATION 

pillows, with deep purple marks, almost like bruises, be¬ 
neath her pale, bloodshot eyes, was remote and dignified 
in her gentle, faint-toned way; so unlike that Francie 
whom she had alternately bullied, patronised and petted, 
that she felt crude and out of it; more lonely than she had 
ever felt before, for no one could ever think of seeking 
for comfort with Gertrude; while the two younger girls, 
Beatrice and Ella, were still in the schoolroom and hope¬ 
less gigglers. If only Piers would come back; but Piers 
was away with his ship somewhere in the China seas. 

It really was too perfectly awful to be all littered up 
with sisters and only one brother among the lot, a brother 
who had been pretty constantly away from home since he 
was thirteen; though he mightn’t have been much good at 
a time like this. Anyhow, was anyone ever any good 
when one got that awful, empty feeling, something like 
hunger and yet not hunger, far worse than that; wanting 
people when one was away from them, and yet finding 
them of no use whatever when one was with them; always 
expecting to find them noble, or else dreadfully in need of 
one, and finding them neither; just so inclined to be 
snubby that she had to be snubby herself, and utterly 
beastly ? 

Throughout the days of Francie’s slow convalescence, 

* when Francie herself seemed to care for nothing very 
much, not even the loss of her babies—could be roused to 
no revolt whatever against the Almighty, or things in 
general; seemed, indeed, to lose interest in Frankie’s let¬ 
ters and the idea of that far-away bishopric—Claudia 
hung about the house, hoping that she might be wanted. 
That there might be something, a crisis even, almost any 
sort of crisis—so long as it took Francie no further than 
the gates of death—which would call forth those powers, 
that faculty for rising to an emergency which she knew her¬ 
self to possess; seeing herself as the director, guide, com¬ 
forter of the entire household, in a way which, however it 
might foreshadow the future, had no foundation whatever 


22 


REPUTATION 


in the present, no connection with real life; or rather the 
semi-real—the not altogether real though entirely common¬ 
place and practical and well ordered life—of Leesden 
Rectory. 

But this was Claudia’s way: for ever racing towards the 
mountains not yet in sight; climbing them in spirit, breath¬ 
less and at times ill-tempered with the exhaustion of the 
whole thing; seeing both herself and her family in a series 
of mirrors which made them in turn a great deal smaller 
or a great deal larger than they were; distorting them, 
first in one direction and then in another; seeing herself 
as the benevolent despot of the village with everyone turn¬ 
ing to her for advice and help; the proud, misunderstood, 
aloof member of the family; the only really happy or the 
really miserable one; more extremely happy or more ex¬ 
tremely miserable than anyone had ever been before; shak¬ 
ing herself up, standing back a little and looking at herself 
as though she were a sort of kaleidoscope; exasperatingly 
cocksure and aggressive on the surface; and yet beneath 
it all dangerously dependent upon others, craving for af¬ 
fection. 

A thoroughly tiresome girl to live with; as, after all, 
most girls are. 


CHAPTER II 


The parish of Leesden and the country round it is 
rich in woodland. There are no steep or imposing hills. 
Strangers, indeed, dismiss the place as being “as flat as 
your hand”; but this is not true, for there are innumer¬ 
able, smooth, sloping valleys with streams at the bottom of 
them. In between these are wide flattish pieces of country, 
but always undulating in long, running sweeps; not in the 
least flat as Lincolnshire and the Romney Marshes are flat. 

The fields are small and divided by low, loosely heaped 
stone walls, pasture and arable land; wheat, barley and 
oats but more particularly turnips and swedes, green with 
their own heavy greenness, with their own distinct acrid 
smell throughout the late summer and early spring: banked 
up into long barrows during the winter, with the eastern 
side most often covered in snow, for the east winds are 
proverbial in that part of Oxfordshire, where, as they 
say, it is “two great coats colder” than on the borders of 
Warwickshire, less than ten miles off. When these bar- 
rows of turnips, swedes and fleshly looking mangels are 
opened, they give out a rank odour indistinguishable from 
the stench of the sheep in their innumerable hurdled pens 
—a stench like death; while the scattered roots with the 
insides rotted or gnawed out of them look like skulls 
scattered over the hacked and sodden soil. 

In her later life, Claudia Waring, with that sensitive 
and almost fantastic sense of smell, remembered her girl¬ 
hood’s home as a sort of map of characteristic odours; 
sheep and turnips in the open fields during the winter; 
willow-strife and elder bloom in the lush, fly-ridden hol¬ 
lows throughout the summer; the faintly aromatic smell 

23 


24 


REPUTATION 


of colts-foot on the wind-parched March fallow; while 
altogether apart and sacred, and wonderful as the prom¬ 
ised land, never to he forgotten, was the winter, spring, 
summer and autumn scent of beech woods. 

Still it might be called an ugly country. One can un¬ 
derstand that, looking at it coldly; but only by those who 
come to it too late and do not give themselves time to know 
it well. For anyone who loves it watches for the changes 
in it, as one watches for the transfiguring smile upon the 
face of some plain, dearly loved woman; finding in their 
hearts a fixed abiding place for its sweeping folds, for its 
serene villages with their fine, solidly built, grey stone 
houses, thatched or roofed with grey tiles; for its woods 
—above all else for its woods; draping and enfolding it, 
lending it colour and warmth and shelter and recesses 
for privacy, a delicious secrecy; meeting that need for 
some place, where one can be oneself, alone with oneself, 
unbiassed and unabashed in a way which is impossible in 
a house, a room, where the door may open at any moment, 
where the intimate belongings, the echoes of other people, 
are for ever intruding. The woods of Leesden and Lees- 
grove, of Ditchley and Barrow, and Snaresborough, of 
Little Norton and Long Norton, stretching to the very 
edge of the Cotswolds; sparce and twisted woods blown 
all sideways by the winds on the uplands; deep dark woods 
with tall, upspringing trees, reaching towards the light, 
masses of sapling and coarse undergrowth, in the hollows 
and along the edges of the stream; and wide-spreading 
opulent trees, curtseying their way into the open, up and 
down the hill sides, the sunny slopes of private parks. 

Close about the village of Leesden these woods are mere 
patches, through very numerous, say three fields, and then 
a wood—or coppice, more properly speaking—of about the 
size of one field; brilliant as silk patches sewn on fustian; 
very bright green in the spring, for they are nearly all 
composed of beeches; grateful in the summer, for it .can 
be scorchingly hot round Leesden, as it can be in all places 


REPUTATION 


25 


swept by the east wind; regal in the autumn; and yet— 
never really diminishing, only changing in beauty—most 
lovely of all throughout the winter, when the long sweep¬ 
ing boughs, the fine twigs, hang like veils of black lace 
against the pale, pinkish-yellow sky of a frosty evening. 

Passing through Leesden towards Leesgrove, ascending 
and descending the gentle slope of so many small valleys, 
crossing over so many brooks, each with its gate and 
rounded, grass-grown stone bridge, one comes to a place 
where the woods have gathered together into massed regi¬ 
ments, making the others seem like mere outposts, undis¬ 
tinguished skirmishers. 

Here the roads themselves run through woods which 
break and mar them by their constant drippings—for the 
local stone is a soft, pale yellow stuff, beating up into a 
sort of cream, running away in innumerable gulleys with 
the first shower of rain—miles upon miles of woods. And 
yet cut into by so many open spaces that there is no whole 
to be called a forest; far more open spaces than there 
should be, even now when the present Duke has spent 
thousands in replanting. For when the much discussed, 
and as the ladies of Leesden called him “naughty, thrill¬ 
ing” Lord Blagden, inheriting the place from his mother, 
found himself pressed, over-pressed, by his creditors, his 
first thought was to cut down trees, and yet more trees; to 
go on cutting down, regarding his woods as a species of 
widow’s cruse. 

The open spaces left exposed in this fashion—and they 
were really far better than the neat little plantation of 
Christmassy-looking trees with their wire fences, so like 
the present Duke himself—hid the shame of their naked¬ 
ness gracefully enough, carpeted as they were with wind 
flowers, and dog violets, with primroses and bluebells; with 
wood-mercury and the purple orchis with its deep maroon 
spotted leaves; with the pale autumn crocus and white 
wood sorrel, that flower which above all others touched 
Claudia Waring to a softness of which none of her family 


26 


REPUTATION 


would have believed her capable, to something indeed very- 
like tears; the sort of tears which she felt beginning in her 
backbone like the thrill of music, so different from angry 
tears starting with that queer tightness in the chest. 

These woods of Leesden and Leesgrove and all the other 
woods, are—apart from the stripped open spaces, the lost 
edges of those innumerable little streams which run more 
slowly, oozing to a greater width, throughout the wood¬ 
land—carpeted, throughout the entire winter, in in¬ 
numerable layers of beech mast and beech leaf; with the 
birds pecking and rattling and the wood mice rustling in a 
perpetual hurried busyness amid the crisp upper layers. 

They are, indeed, never altogether still; for in addition 
to all the smaller sounds there is the harsh cry of the jay, 
the gurgling cough of the pheasant; the bark of sheep dogs 
in open fields or among the pens, or in a wavering ribbon 
of sound from side to side of the high road; the bark of the 
keepers’ dogs chained outside their doors, or—and one 
can follow this by the intensifying and diminishing, the 
plain advance and retreat of sound—running with a loose 
leash along a wire, up and down the borders of the pheas¬ 
ant reserves; the questing cry of some lurching cur off on 
a poaching expedition of its own, sharing with man the 
most venial of all misdemeanours; or, rather, wilder by 
far, the cutting sharpness of a fox’s bark; while above all 
and always, though more insistent and possessive through¬ 
out the spring, there swings the unceasing, rhythmical 
caw of rooks. 

On one particular day in the first week of October—some 
six weeks after the fleeting episode of Francie’s twins— 
every other sound in Leesgrove woods was wiped out by 
the frantic yelps of Pickles, Claudia Waring’s terrier, hot 
upon the trail of something or other; running too fast, 
doubling too sharply, for a rabbit. 

There was a touch of frost in the still air, and this 
particular wood, “The Long Wood,” lay upon either side 
of one of those narrow, stream fed valleys, so that the noise 


REPUTATION 27 

was accentuated to a piercing shrillness which drove Clau¬ 
dia to despair. 

Her mother had once said to her: “Really, Claudia, 
I sometimes think that you must be possessed of a devil. ,, 

Claudia had pondered over this a good deal, partly be¬ 
cause it was such an amazing thing for her mother—who 
was usually so very placid, so very discreet in her lan¬ 
guage, with her “nice” and “nasty,” “pretty,” “sweet,” 
“naughty”—to say; and partly because she realised it to 
be so true. For it seemed, indeed, as though some secret 
and evil power would, at times, take her and drive her to 
do the forbidden, the completely idiotic thing; then, when 
it had got her really on the run, suddenly desert her, leav¬ 
ing her contrite and ashamed, having put herself in the 
wrong and gained nothing by it. 

She had been forbidden to take her dog into the woods 
at all excepting on a leash, more particularly into these 
woods, bordering upon Lord Blagden’s park and less than 
half a mile from the house itself. 

The Rector had, indeed, expressed a rather confused wish 
that the girls should keep altogether clear of the Leesgrove 
woods just now, because of the pheasants. 

“But really I am always so very careful to keep to the 
main drive when I go to play the organ, Papa,” protested 
Gertrude, for ever on the defensive; for the parish was 
Leesden-cum-Leesgrove and there was a small church in 
the very wood itself, where there was a service every Sun¬ 
day afternoon and Holy Communion at eight o’clock on 
the second Sunday in the month, taken by Mr. Ashton the 
curate. The Rector himself was always going to officiate 
at this, but never did for the simple reason that he never 
happened to be very well on the preceding Saturday eve¬ 
ning, and a message had to be sent round to Mr. Ashton, 
begging him to hold himself in readiness in case the indis¬ 
position should last. 

Claudia, however, knew perfectly well that it was not 
because of the pheasants that Leesgrove woods were ten- 


28 


REPUTATION 


tatively forbidden. If that had been the case it would have 
been clear cut and definite. For this sort of vagueness, 
‘‘Perhaps it might be better not, ,, was only used in con¬ 
nection with anything which it was difficult to put into 
words; anything “not quite nice,” for instance. In this 
case it was Blagden who took the part of that sort of 
ravening wolf that it seemed “better’’ all ewe lambs should 
be kept away from. 

“A precious fat old wolf,” thought Claudia scornfully; 
for though she had not seen him lately enough to re¬ 
member him, someone had spoken of him as “growing 
stout ’ 9 ; and he must be as old as old, for he had a grown¬ 
up son, married and with a child, or children, of his own. 

At the same time, if either of her parents had definitely 
forbidden Leesgrove Woods, she would not have gone there. 
But nothing irritated her so much as this sort of assump¬ 
tion that she was still a child, always an idiot; this habit 
of refusing to allow her to look things in the face, let alone 
put them into words, for she was as impatient as all young 
things are of what she called “humbug.” 

Thus, when the questions which she asked of her father, 
more as a scornful taunt than anything else, with a—“I 
suppose you mean because of Lord Blagden,” endeavour¬ 
ing to nail him down to a straight answer with—“What 
on earth could Lord Blagden do to me?” remained unan¬ 
swered, save for that exasperatingly frequent and slight¬ 
ing, “Little girls should not ask questions, should be seen 
and not heard,” the whole thing was marked down, along 
with so many other grown-up fussiness, as mere bosh, and 
nothing more. 

What on earth could Lord Blagden, fat and frightfully 
old, do to her, she thought, in her own contemptuous, 
cocksure fashion. Wasn’t she old enough to take care of 
herself? After all, Francie was married before she was 
nineteen. Claudia told herself this as evidence of grown- 
upness, though all the time, in her heart of hearts, she 
realised that if Francie had really been able to take care 


REPUTATION 


29 


of herself, possessed any sort of judgment, she would not 
have vowed to honour and obey such a poor creature as 
the Reverend Frank Stevens. 

Francie had once said, very early in her married life, 
before she became so altogether secretive about it all: 
“He snuffles when he's excited.'' And when Claudia en¬ 
quired, with a good deal of contempt, what on earth there 
was for him to be excited about, Francie had only replied: 
“Oh, well, you know there are things that girls don’t know 
anything about till they're married," with a shudder of 
disgust, a look as though she were feeling more than a little 
sick, and yet far away at the back of it all—at the back of 
the shudder, the queer lines drawn down at either side of 
her mouth, the rather strained look in her blue eyes, suf¬ 
fused in tears—with a sort of triumph; that exasperating 
expression of a person who knows something as yet un¬ 
known to oneself. 

“Must make him look more like a sick rabbit than ever." 
That's what Claudia said, half sniffing—really a little like 
snuffling—herself, then remembering and nipping it off in 
the bud. Catch her doing anything in the least like 
Frankie!—“The little beast." She had never thought of 
him quite like that before, he was too insignificant; but she 
did now, and it was Francie's fault, Francie with that 
fleeting air of sly and half triumphant disgust. 

No, no, it was no use pretending to mould oneself upon 
Francie. And, after all, getting married, particularly to 
a curate, might be a weakness rather than a declaration of 
independence. 

Anyhow she, Claudia, had no sort of fear of “that old 
Blagden." “I'd like to see anyone interfering with me," 
she said. “And after all, they're always fussing about 
something or other." 

She would have scorned to share a taste with Miss Fair, 
but at the back of all this there was a hint of the same 
idea, that a man would be no less likable for a trace of 
wildness. She hated mugs, and that's what most of the 


30 


REPUTATION 


men she knew were, at least all the younger ones. Her 
father was not a mug, he was too big and dignified and 
self-important for that, with so much manner that even 
Claudia could only believe herself mistaken when she 
seemed to detect any signs of weakness, realise the way in 
which he was, at times, swept down and under by her 
mother’s smooth, vaguely seeming, and yet unwavering, 
obstinacy. 

He was self-indulgent, too. How often had she heard 
him say that he believed that port wine made him heavy, 
emphasised that gouty tendency which had to be combated 
by a month at Harrogate each summer; and yet he never 
gave up the port. He used to say: “I know I ought not 
to take it, but just one glass, eh, Miles?” Miles was the 
butler who was never appealed to excepting upon this one 
point, and even here nothing more than a polite murmur, 
like a dove’s moan, was expected of him. 

In the drawing-room, before the gong sounded for din¬ 
ner, on the Saturday evening prior to the early service at 
Leesgrove he always said he would not take port because 
it made him sleepy in the morning; but he always took it 
because he always happened to remember that he had had 
a particularly hard day; while, even before nine o’clock 
that evening, the prospect of a two-mile walk through the 
woods, leaving home in time to conduct the service at 
eight, seemed to be altogether out of the question, though 
his message to his curate was never more decisive than 
that—‘ ‘ Tell Mr. Ashton to hold himself in readiness—he 
will understand what I mean; he knows what a tiring 
day I’ve had, no one better.” 

Inevitably Gertrude worked herself up into a morose 
state of panic—for though she was always talking about 
Providence she never really trusted it—over this prospect 
of the Rector taking the service himself. “It’s just the 
way things do happen with me,” that is what she said, 
though it had never happened as yet, and most probably 
never would. “The one day in the week that we have a 


REPUTATION 


31 


moment to ourselves,’ ’ she would add, “we” meaning 
herself and Mr. Ashton, who walked back from the early 
service with her; for the curate breakfasted at the Rectory 
upon that particular morning so as to be near at hand 
for the Sunday-school, where he took the Rector’s class. 
“My dear Mr. Waring, you can’t give me too much to do,” 
that’s what Mr. Ashton said. “Why, I’m bursting with 
energy, literally bursting, you know, and youth upon my 
side.” 

The Rector used to stare at him oddly when he said 
this, as though he were some curiously curvetting little 
animal. He took much the same attitude with all his 
curates, and perhaps he had never said anything more 
cruel—though no one realised it, himself least of all—than 
when he declared that his third daughter and little 
Frankie Stevens were “very well suited to each other.” 

Oh no, Claudia Waring’s father was self-indulgent and 
a good deal of a toady—if he had not been that he would 
have said straight out: “That fellow Blagden’s a scoun¬ 
drel, lord or no lord, and I don’t mean to have anything 
to do with him, show him that he is in any way to be 
tolerated”—but for all that he was no muff. His tempers 
alone were sufficient proof of this, raging storms of temper 
of a kind which seem to have blown themselves out by 
the end of the nineteenth century; tempers which drove 
his wife to her room in tears and made the servants so 
nervous that they dropped or upset everything that they 
touched. 

Oh yes, there was something vital about the Rural 
Dean, with his tempers, his greed, his taste for having 
pretty girls about the place; it was only in connection 
with his daughters that he became muffish in this way of 
refusing to call a spade a spade. The girls must have 
read of bastards in their history books, but not for the 
world would he have said to Claudia in answer to her 
scornful question, “What in the world could Lord Blag- 
den do to me?”—“Well, my dear, if you keep your eyes 


32 


REPUTATION 


and ears open you’ll find that he never goes anywhere 
without leaving trouble, and you know what the word 
‘ trouble’ means to a woman, behind him; and that’s 
what he can do and does do; and might do to you as well 
as to any other girl, so where’s the use of making any 
bones about it?” 

But he did not say this, only: ‘‘Little girls mustn’t 
ask questions,” chucking Claudia under the chin, for she 
was his favourite, despite, or perhaps because of, that 
spice of devil which her mother had lamented. 

Thus it was that the head keeper, whom Claudia did 
know, struck her as far more to be feared than the lord of 
the manor whom she did not know; for there was something 
in Knowles which seemed to press itself down upon her; 
something ruthless and insolent and overbearing, and yet 
at the same time sly and triumphant in the stare of those 
hot reddish-brown eyes, as though he were holding back 
some secret which gave him the right to behave as he 
liked towards his betters. 

Once already he had caught Pickles poaching and 
brought him back to his mistress; holding him scornfully 
out at arms’ length by the scruff of his neck, looking pretty 
well as humiliated as a dog could look. When Claudia had 
murmured something which she was ashamed to think of as 
an apology, he had rapped out: “All I can say is that it 
mustn’t happen again!” And this from a working man 
to a lady, no “Miss,” no anything, just “it mustn’t hap¬ 
pen again.”—' “Mustn’t!” Not even “Will you be pleased 
to see-?” 

Claudia had raged under this insult. She would, in 
her thinking moments, have gone miles out of her way to 
avoid meeting Knowles; she was even glad that he did not 
go to church, and this was another phase of his insolence; 
yet here she was, in his very domain, and undeniably in the 
wrong. “It’s just the sort of silly-billy thing I would go 
and do, ’ ’ she said to herself, exasperated by her own folly, 
the way in which some annoying trifle at home had sent 


REPUTATION 


33 


her dashing out, without so much as a thought as to where 
she was going, bent upon nothing more than just walking 
it off; not even taking the trouble to leave her dog tied 
up at home. 

She kept to the main drive through the wood because 
every moment she thought that Pickles must cross it in 
pursuit of his quarry. Once or twice she dived into the 
thick undergrowth, still whistling, still shouting; but by 
the time she had reached the spot from which the long- 
drawn shrieking yaps seemed to come, they were off in 
another direction, and she had only wasted her time in 
getting back to the main path, missed a possible chance. 

She was in the very centre of the wood, where the hazel 
saplings grew like a wall at either side of the drive, when 
the thing she was waiting for—for there seemed some 
sort of fatality attached to all she did—came to pass; and 
a man’s figure in breeches and gaiters, a rough brown 
tweed coat and cap, emerged from a side path some fifty 
yards in front of her, with all the prompt and solid sure¬ 
ness of the inevitable. 

She could not turn and run—it was too awful to think 
of herself pursued and caught, maybe by the scruff of the 
neck like some marauding urchin or cur, like Pickles him¬ 
self—and there was no branch path open to her; nothing 
really in the way of choice apart from that unthinkable 
running back, or walking straight on with the sort of 
courage with which one might approach the mouth of a 
gun, fully loaded and certain to go off sooner or later. 

She was hot with her exertions, dazed and stupid with 
disgust and fear; and so certain it was Knowles, in her 
queer fatalistic way, that there seemed no room for any 
doubt until she was within twenty yards of the approach¬ 
ing figure; even so she held her head so high that she did 
not take it in as quickly as she might have done. 

And then—"What a fool she had been, overcome by sheer 
funk, for it was not the keeper after all. Though even 
when she did realise her mistake she had a queer hit on 


34 


REPUTATION 


the head sort of feeling, for this man was so amazingly like 
him; the differences lying in something finer and less 
aggressive, perhaps because there was no need for ag¬ 
gression; something in the set of the clothes, which at first 
sight had looked exactly the same; something else which 
emerged gradually, little by little, like a slowly developing 
photograph. 

It was when they were not more than half a dozen 
yards apart that a young fox, glowing red like the beech 
leaves, shot out of the undergrowth and crossed the wide 
drive between them, with Pickles in hot pursuit. 

Claudia shrieked at him: “ Pickles, Pickles!” while the 

words were not out of her mouth before the thought “I 
might have pretended that he didn’t belong to me!” came 
to her. But at any rate her cry did check the dog, gave 
her time to run forward, sweep him up in her arms 
struggling and panting, his red tongue hanging out so 
far that it was a marvel where he put it at any other 
time. 

“By Jove, that was a near thing! Vulpicide, you know. 
A serious crime, that! ’ ’ 

“I’m sorry,” said Claudia, fighting against Pickles’ 
muddy paws, straggling over her neck and chest, tearing 
at her ribbon, turning her head aside from his desperate 
pantings, the drip of saliva. “He doesn’t generally—” 
she was going to say “he doesn’t generally poach,” but 
truth prevailed and she altered it to: “He’s a frightful 
poacher, I don’t know what to do with him.” 

“Better not let my head keeper get at him, that’s all. 
I have every sort of sympathy with poachers myself, but 
Knowles—” The stranger broke off with a shrug, while it 
struck Claudia that he disliked Knowles as much as she 
did, though it was not likely that he would be afraid of 
him; and what was that he had said, “My keeper?” Then 
it must be Lord Blagden. 

“I’m awfully sorry!” That still forbidden word was 
out before she could stop it. ‘ ‘ Hell is awful and the Lord 


35 


REPUTATION 

God is awful, but I must,say I fail—I daresay I am old- 
fashioned—to find anything very awful in your plain 
duties as a clergyman’s daughter,” was what her grand¬ 
mother had said at one of those many moments when 
Claudia kicked against the pricks, complaining of the 

awfulness of Sunday-school, the smell of the children. 

“I mean I am most frightfully sorry.” 

“Well, I’m not.” 

There was something in Lord Blagden’s tone at that 
which reminded her of Knowles; something of the same 
sort of insolence though she could not have said what, and 
her back stiffened. 

“Anyhow I apologise,” she jerked out in a way that her 
family particularly disliked, hugging Pickles tight, divided 
between rage and affection; for though it was he who had 
got her into this mess he was her own dog, and she loved 

him. 

Lord Blagden felt the change in her manner and begged 
her very formally not to apologise; for he was extraor¬ 
dinarily quick and sensitive in respect to the moods, 
the likes or dislikes, of any good-looking woman, more 
particularly in so far as they concerned himself; and it 
must be acknowledged that he had had a great deal of 
practice. It was this, indeed, which endeared him to the 
opposite sex in a way that all the virtues in the world 
would have been powerless to do. The fact being that 
virtuous men do not understand women and never will; 
they have not the experience; and women like to be under¬ 
stood as much as men dislike it. 

“Please do put him down, he’s making an awful mess 
of you.” 

It was a peculiarly pleasant voice, and Pickles, taken out 
of his mistress’s arms and patted and cuffed, then dropped 
to the ground, responded to it by leaping, grinning and 
panting—overcome with the sudden affection of a not 
altogether well-bred dog—against the new-comer’s brown 
leather gaiters. 


36 


REPUTATION 


“Down, old fellow, down. You wouldn’t have done 
that if it had been Knowles, eh?” 

Claudia laughed, suddenly and completely at her ease; 
confiding and friendly as she had a way of becoming all 
at once; rushing forward and then drawing back, if any¬ 
one so much as laid a finger upon her own personality, 
freedom of speech or action. “I believe every dog in the 
place that knows Knowles, would run a mile from him— 
have you noticed that ? Why, his own dogs sneak along at 
his heels; they never go dashing on in front looking happy 
and sort of adventurous like other dogs—I hate him! 
I’m awfully glad you think he’s a beast too!” She had 
no grounds for this, but that did not disturb her; why 
even Pickles, whom she had to go back for again and 
again in the course of any single walk, wrest from the 
embracing of some stray man or other, likely enough a 
tramp, had always hated Knowles, long before he was 
offered that greatest of all indignities for any dog: to with 
being held up by the scruff of the neck—at arms’ length, 
too. 

“We’d better make sure that he doesn’t get off again, 
or I wouldn’t answer for the consequences—to any of 
us. The lord knows, I might lose my place over it!” 

Blagden was stooping as he knotted one corner of a 
large silk handkerchief into Pickles’ collar. At the last 
words he looked up, laughing like a boy, and Claudia 
realised what it was that constituted the greatest of all 
the differences between him and his head keeper: for his 
eyes were blue, very bright, full of fun, and amazingly 
youthful, with that sort of youth upon which the mere 
passage of years seems to have no effect whatever—no, nor 
troubles either, for the simple reason that they never 
go altogether deep enough. He twisted the handkerchief 
into a rope and gave the further corner of it to Claudia; 
then, when she said that she must go home, turned as 
though it were the most natural thing in the world and 
walked by her side. 


REPUTATION 


37 


The thing had just happened; all in a moment as it 
were. Why, they had not exchanged half a dozen words, 
and yet here they were, walking side by side like old 
friends; with Pickles twisting round Claudia’s legs in 
his effort to walk between them, lavish equal affection 
upon both. 

Blagden was a tall, broad-shouldered and rather more 
than deep-chested man. Later on Claudia was furious to 
think of anyone daring to say that he had grown stout; 
but he was certainly very much thicker through and 
heavier than he had been a few years earlier, though this 
gave him a sort of dignity of the Georgian kind. He 
had reddish brown hair, slightly curling and powdered with 
grey; a fine aquiline nose, which had withstood the effects 
of time—a peculiarly care-free time—far better than the 
wide, rather too mobile mouth; an under lip thicker than 
it should have been, and sweep of cheek, clean-shaved save 
for a narrow strip of whisker no longer than the ear— 
which descended into something like a jowl; though the 
skin was so fresh and clear that, in conjunction with the 
peculiarly bright blue eyes, it gave the whole face a 
delightful look of youth and cleanliness: the sort of look 
which one associates with very large sponges. 

Altogether he fitted into the woodland. Whatever might 
be said of him and his philanderings it seemed pretty 
certain that he must have, on the whole, philandered out of 
doors. As he walked at Claudia’s side he kept looking 
down at her with the greatest pleasure and amusement, as 
though she had been some new sort of pet, like a tame 
squirrel. And, indeed, he was delighted with her; for 
just at that time he was out of it with his wife who did 
not appreciate him; his always defiant attitude towards 
a woman so much cleverer than himself stiffened to a half 
savage resentment, sense of grievance; enraged with his 
son, who wanted to treat him as an old man; and 
thoroughly put out by the insolence of a female friend who 
owed the very clothes on her back to his generosity, clothes 


38 


REPUTATION 


of which the inadequacy of the upper half was more than 
balanced by the amazing voluminosity of the lower—there 
was one dress with twenty-eight frills on the skirt, apart 
from the draped panniers, the ruche-trimmed train, and 
some ten inches of peaked bodice with baby sleeves well 
off the shoulders—the still more amazing price; though 
the rupture itself was by no means due to this—for he 
was generous to a fault, loved to spend money on pretty 
women—rather to the fact that, while showing plain signs 
of wishing to keep a firm hold upon his cheque-book, she 
still desired to limit, more and more, the hours spent in 
his company, referring to him, unhappily within hearing, 
as 4 ‘that old trout.” 

Altogether people were behaving very badly, and he had 
come down to Leesgrove to sulk, had sulked for close upon 
six weeks, bored to death with everything and everybody: 
with himself, with the men he had invited to shoot; above 
all with the fact that everybody seemed to think that he 
was down there for no better reason than to mend their 
roofs, re-build their pigsties, or see to their confounded 
drains. And that was one of the drawbacks to being 
“out” with his wife, who took all the stupid people, all 
the tiresome duties, off his shoulders; stiffening her own 
slender, and yet exasperatingly adequate, back beneath the 
burden; seeming, according to him, to actually like it; for 
—“All women have a craze for making martyrs of them¬ 
selves, and it’s better to give them their heads; keeps them 
out of mischief,” was what he said: jeering at, respecting, 
fearing, at times actively hating, and yet totally unable to 
do without, her: “A woman like a plucked fowl out of a 
refrigerating chamber,” as her daughter-in-law, Herries , 
wife, described her; but for all that the one person who 
never failed him, who realised him as he was—a rather 
pathetically spoilt, over-grown schoolboy, who would have 
been all the better for a thorough spanking at least once 
a week—and yet loved him. 

Only that morning he had been half thinking that he 


REPUTATION 


39 


would make it up with her; scared by a letter from the 
bank, put out by a badly made omelette—and whatever 
Georgina else might be, hang it all, she did know how to 
run a house—and overcome by the feeling that everything 
was altogether too much for him. Though now, with 
Claudia Waring at his side—something altogether new, 
with the first flavour, the first hint of piquancy that he 
had encountered since he came to the place—all else was 
forgotten. 


CHAPTER III 


Claudia’s movements were light and decisive, she held 
her head erect. “Breeding there,” he thought. 

He liked the way in which she was dressed. Her little 
round felt hat pulled on, not perched as most women wore 
them; her thick blue serge skirt—well to her feet, the 
edge coated with mud, and yet short for those days; her 
Garibaldi, loosely made of brickish red stuff with a turn¬ 
down collar of the same material and blue ribbon tie— 
undone now and all anyhow—suited her far better than 
the gown she had worn at the sewing party; the very 
grown-up gown erupting with buttons, fortified with whale¬ 
bone and buckram, her very best, “heightum-tightum 
Sabbathical, ” as she called it. 

There was a smear of brown soil from Pickles ’ paw down 
one cheek and across the hollow of her neck—which would 
have been discreetly covered had not the last remaining 
hook parted company with its eye that morning, and had 
she not, in her usual reckless way, trusted to her tie to 
keep it firm—an altogether enchanting young neck. 

Her youth called to his, that well-spring of youth which 
survives so insistently in so many men, with no sort of 
pretence at all; leading them on to, as the saying goes, 
“make fools of themselves about young girls,” with, at 
first anyhow, none of those sinister motives which are 
usually attributed to them, nothing more than a sort of 
instinctive seeking out of a playfellow. 

And how really ridiculously, pathetically young this 
girl was; the oddest mixture of softness and hardness, 
dignity and hoydonishness. It was like warming one’s 
limbs in the sun to be with her. 

40 


REPUTATION 


41 


He laughed outright, a deep laugh of sheer content and 
amusement: for here was the first feminine piece out of 
buckram or starched print that he had met with in this 
territory of his, a place he systematically avoided, not 
only on account of the dulness of the people, but because 
of that chap Knowles; for he was more sensitive than any¬ 
one could have thought, and Knowles, with his insolent 
respect, got him on the raw, as he expressed it; while it was 
difficult to give the fellow notice—though how difficult 
he did not then know—for his own mother, who had a 
mania for making amends, righting wrongs which were far 
better forgotten, had installed him there, showing less 
consideration, in that extreme Christian way which takes 
the disagreeable for the right, of the feelings of her own 
flesh and blood than she was of the feelings of this man 
who most emphatically was not, and most shamefully and 
blatantly not, any real blood relation—of hers, at any rate. 

Blagden was accustomed to override everyone whom he 
disliked. But he could not do this with Knowles. Away 
from Leesgrove he could forget him; but once there he 
had, as always, up to this moment, filled his horizon. 

Claudia glanced up quickly at his laugh. “I don’t 
know what you’re laughing at,” she said, half inclined 
to be offended; and then catching his glance, the odd 
puppyhood of it, laughed herself. “Why, we’ve not even 
been introduced!” 

“Mustn’t one laugh unless one’s been introduced?” 

“Well, some people, people about here, seem to think 
that one must never laugh at all.” She quite forgot 
that one of the complaints against her in her own family 
was that she was always frowning, contemptuous of those 
amusements which had proved sufficient for the others. 

“A precious rumpty-foo lot!” said Blagden, and stared 
down at her, frankly admiring and amused; for there was 
certainly nothing of what he called the “rumpty-foo” 
element here. What lines she had; a thoroughbred filly 
if ever there was one. 


42 REPUTATION 

“All the same I don’t see what there is to laugh at,” 
said Claudia. 

Blagden came to a pause, still laughing. “Well, you 
know, or I suppose you don’t know, so I’d better tell you 
before you run into any of the old tabbies of the place, 
that you’ve got one distinct muddy paw mark on your 
cheek, more than a soupcon of my wood—or Knowles’ 
woods—on your pretty little nose, and close upon half 
an acre under your chin.” 

“Good Lord!” cried Claudia, too horrified to take any 
proper notice of that “pretty little,” pulling out her hand¬ 
kerchief and scrubbing at her face, the side of neck until 
it was a fine crimson; though even so Blagden himself 
was obliged to put the finishing touches, holding the 
corner of her handkerchief to her lips and bidding her 
“lick it” in the approved nurses’ way. 

It was he who tied her bow tie. ‘ ‘ What a kid you are, ’ ’ 
he said, with the pleasant touch of her warm chin about 
his fingers, thinking how nice it would have been to have 
a daughter like this; with a fresh grudge against his 
wife for giving him nothing more than that dry stick of 
a son, narrow as his own pointed feet, precise as a school- 
marm. What was it that confounded prig Herries had 
said only a month or so ago? “A man of your age, an 
old man like you. Anyone would think you’d have more 
sense of dignity!” And all because he, himself, who had 
hopes of standing for their own particular constituency 
—nothing to do with Leesgrove, banned and barred on 
account of that fellow Knowles—happened to be enter¬ 
taining a party to supper at the Criterion on the same 
night as his father. 

In its own way it was rather a joke, for there could 
scarcely have been any two parties more different: Herries 
with his confoundedly political friends and possible sup¬ 
porters, all men, and men who took life as seriously as 
possible, the Home Secretary among them, and his father 
with a couple of other ions vivants and a bunch of the 


REPUTATION 


43 


girls, including Chrissie Dare, who turned nasty only a 
couple of days later. There was one little blonde; to 
start off with Blagden did not even know her name, for 
it was Harrington who had brought her—Harrington with 
a dreary wife and family of dreary daughters at home 
in the dankest hole in the midlands—a girl who did not 
look a day more than seventeen with an extraordinarily 
virginal air; as corrupt, or more so, than any woman there, 
but wearing an air of innocence so complete that every 
man was on fire to teach her what life really was, from 
his own point of view. 

She had declared that she would drink nothing but 
water, and this too was part of her pose, a real eccentricity 
for any woman in those days. At first Blagden, en¬ 
grossed with his other guests, took no notice of her; then 
as he grew restive under the unchanging aspect of Miss 
Dare’s bare shoulder—turned well away from him as she 
leant forward, chipping young Gillies further up the table 
—his eyes, hot, restless and indignant, began to wander, 
alighting upon Harrington’s little friend with her smooth 
flaxen head, so different from the touzled fringes, the heaped 
sausage curls of the others. 

There was a flowing supply of champagne, laughter and 
loud talk, for if you did not make a noise you were sup¬ 
posed to be of the dull rumpty-foo, stick-in-the-mud sort, 
to use Blagden’s own expression. 

“Hey, you, why aren’t you drinking something? Come 
now, Miss—Miss—what’s your name now? No shirkers 
here, you know.” 

“My name’s Star, if you want to know, Lord Blagden,” 
answered the girl, and gazed at him with the limpid 
candour of a child, her lips a little parted, waiting for what 
he had to say next. 

“Not Three Star, eh?” queried Lord Blagden, and the 
fact that this produced a general laugh showed the sort 
of state they were all in. 

“Oh, no, I leave that to you.” 


44 


REPUTATION 


There was a fresh roar of laughter; several men banged 
on the table, while Chrissie Dare turned round languidly 
in that slow way of hers, and told him not to make a fool 
of himself. 

“You be quiet and go on walking your own pup,” re¬ 
torted her host in exasperated reference to young Gillies, 
fresh and fair as a girl. “Now then, Miss—Miss—what¬ 
ever you call yourself—Star, is it?—none of this, you 
know; you’ve got to think of something or other—brandy, 
port, sherry, if you stick out against fizz, come now! ’’ 

Miss Star did not answer; only as he insisted, shook her 
smooth little head, gazing at him with very round eyes; 
then, as he went on and on, put out her tongue at him, 
just the tip of it, a very small pink tongue. 

It was at this that he jumped up, saying he’d be 
damned if he didn’t make her drink, and passing round 
the table, stood behind her chair: put one arm round her 
neck, his hand under her round white chin, and held the 
glass of champagne to her lips, upsetting it down the front 
of her gown; upon which she abused him in terms that 
set the whole table rocking with laughter, calling down 
upon them the intervention of the manager, the amused 
or contemptuous stare of everyone else in the long room, 
among them Herries and his party, who very certainly 
did not laugh, showed no signs whatever of amusement. 

It was queer that of all the very nasty things Miss 
Star said it was the word “ old ’ ‘ ‘ you old fool you, ’ ’ which 

carried a barb to Blagden’s mind; stuck there too, as did 
the words of one member of Herries’ party, distinct above 
the general uproar on account of its peculiarly clear and 
deliberate utterance—so impressive that it brought him 
the whole attention of the House whatever the inanities, 
and they were many, that he chose to utter—“Who’s that 
old fool? I imagined we’d left all that sort of thing 
behind us with the Georges.” 

It was later on in Blagden’s own rooms—the bachelor 
suite which it pleased him to keep in Albany, on the 


REPUTATION 


45 


pretence that it was not worth opening up the big house 
in Berkeley Square, a house like a mausoleum, whenever 
he wanted to run up to town for a day or so on business— 
that his son took him to task, a son so unlike his father, so 
completely the dead spit of his mother, that he might have 
belonged to one of those species of marine creatures, which 
chip off bits of themselves, in place of giving birth to their 
progeny; a small man too, a dry, yellowish splinter of a 
man; thirty-four and already thinking of his health, dread¬ 
ing wet feet and draughts, talking of “when I was a young 
man”; with a boy at a preparatory school, and a couple 
of smaller children. For Blagden’s son had, like him¬ 
self, married when he was only just of age, a girl of 
irreproachable family, but with some odd hark back to 
an unacknowledged peasant strain evident in her rosy 
cheeks, her bouncing good humour. 

She was great friends with her father-in-law, who liked 
her, took to her race meetings with him; he would have 
liked his grandchildren too, if it hadn’t looked so damned 
silly for him to have grandchildren at all. 

And seeing him that October day, walking through the 
Leesgro\e woods with Claudia Waring, that’s what almost 
anyone—even the hardest and youngest—might have said. 
For his youth was no sort of an affectation, though at times 
it sagged a little; in the mornings after a gay night, or if 
anyone snubbed him, and he was extraordinarily easily 
snubbed, especially by women; that conquering air of 
his pricked like a bubble. 

The only person he did not mind snubbing him, telling 
him very plainly what she thought of him, was his wife, 
and he was used to that, expected nothing else; in some 
ways it was really comfortable, because of its sureness, 
something like a linseed poultice with a tag of mustard. 
Beside, she was older than he was, and that helped. 

For this growing old was like a sort of wound; no more 
to begin with than a cracked thumb. One forgot it until 
one knocks it up against something or other and then it 


46 


REPUTATION 


was the very devil. He forgot it now, with Claudia, and 
it forgot him: allowing him to fit in with the fine glow 
of that October afternoon, the mature and shining 
splendour of the beech woods, where the spring would 
have been less kind. Claudia herself, and she too was 
sensitive to impressions, might have realised him then, in 
contrast with that extreme youth of the pale green, down 
fringed beech-leaves; the dapple-grey trunks, wind-flowers 
and bluebells. 

As it was she was merely thrilled, not so much by him 
as by the way she herself affected him; buoyed up, filled 
with a fine conceit of herself: treading lightly, with that 
smooth swing from the hips which her mother objected to, 
called ‘‘striding”; delighted with the mere commonplace 
fact of movement, because it was the first time that she 
realised any sort of admiration which was not in a way 
sly; made sure, by some instinct, that her companion liked 
the way she walked, would not label it as “unladylike.” 
How she hated those words “ladylike,” “unladylike,” 
almost as much as she hated being caught up in doing any¬ 
thing she liked, anything which came quite natural to 
her, by the reminder that gentlemen did not care for that 
sort of thing; or, still worse, that gentlemen did not care to 
marry “girls of that sort”—pert, sharp girls, girls of any 
intelligence whatever. For she was still of an age when 
wit is altogether inseparable from personalities. 

They walked to the very edge of the Long Wood, which 
comes to an end for a space and then breaks out again as 
though from sheer irresponsible delight in its own vitality, 
until they were on the very edge of the park itself, knee 
deep in tawny bracken, with the more adventurous of the 
beeches swum out upon the green slope toward the house, 
their low growing branches spread wide and flowing like 
hoops. 

When Claudia said that she must go back now, Blagden 
begged her to come on and have tea with him. “You 
can’t imagine how frightfully lonely it is,” that’s what he 


REPUTATION 


47 


said when she refused; as, of course, she did refuse. For 
at that time, to go to tea at the Hall, alone with the 
master of it, was altogether unthinkable, even for her. 
Strange, strange, how very little later—still unthinkable, 
if she had ever stopped to think, apply her thoughts with 
their sharp blistering quality, to herself—it had grown to 
seem altogether right and natural; not in the least out of 
the way, not in the least wrong or improper, save in the 
eyes of a stupid, censorious, almost incredibly low-minded 
world; in how small a space of time she had formulated 
laws which applied to herself and to no one else; totally 
disregarding her grandmother’s precept, ‘‘Always remem¬ 
ber you’re somebody else to everybody else; that other 
people see as much as you do, judge you as you judge 
them.” 

“Well, if you won’t, you won’t,” said Blagden, with an 
air of regret; but all the same very little disturbed by 
her refusal to take tea with him—as yet. For one is 
always so very certain of the people who seem to look up 
to one. “Anyhow, I’ll walk back with you. Tea? No, 
no, I’m all right. I’m not much of a tea drinker; it’s the 
company that makes it anyhow, and as you refuse me 
that-” 

“Well, why don’t you come home to tea with me? 
You’ll have plenty of company there.” The sense of 
daring, the awful joke of the whole thing went to Claudia’s 
head like wine; no modern girl who is accustomed to ask 
her own friends to the house could imagine what it would 
have been like: almost impossible with anyone, and with 
Blagden.— Only to think of appearing at the Rectory tea- 
table with this black sheep in tow; what could they say, 
what would they do ? An irresistible titter caught 
Claudia’s breath as she pictured the whole thing: their 
faces, the curious aspect of their hands, suspended in mid 
air, with half bitten fragments of hot toast or bread and 
butter. 

“Hello, what are you laughing at? The idea of taking 



48 


REPUTATION 


me home to tea! By Jove, I’ve a good mind to come, to 
keep you to it. Anyhow, where is it—‘home,’ I mean, your 
home. As for the company—’pon my soul I did not know 
that there was any in this dead and alive hole.’’ 

“Oh well, my father and mother and sisters and all 
that,” answered Claudia, with a sudden feeling that a 
family was a dullish sort of bribe for a man of the world, 
“and perhaps the curate,” adding this with a curl of 
her lip, because in those days curates were still objects 
of almost equal worship or comtempt; adored in parishes, 
parodied in music-halls, regarded as fools or gods, never 
altogether men. 

“A curate, eh? What sort of a curate? Come now, all 
young ladies like curates, though I shouldn’t have thought 
you-” 

“Well, I don’t. I simply can’t bear them! All the 
same, two of my sisters have married them. There’s no 
one else here, excepting the men who come for hunting, 
and they—Well, they just hunt; they don’t want to talk 
to girls who don’t hunt.” 

“I can’t imagine anyone not wanting to talk to you, 
and there are other forms of sport, you know. . . . But 
now, for these curates—come, come, two of your sisters, 
eh? You’d better be careful, young lady, those sort of 
things go by threes, you know.” 

“That’s what terrifies me,” said Claudia, laughing. 
“It’s too awful to think of! Really awful, not slang you 
know. And the worst of it is, ’ ’ she looked up in his face, 
her eyes alight with mischief, a sense of audacity, “they 
like me; I’m like fly-paper to curates. There’s no one 
else, you see, absolutely no one else—they’re like what 
Charlotte Bronte says of them in ‘Shirley’—‘thick upon 
the hill.’ ” 

“Oh well, you spoke of your other sisters; they might 
carry off the infection, eh, what? There’s hope there.” 

“The worst of it is, that people so often don’t like the 
very people who are really suitable to them—sort of semi- 



REPUTATION 


49 


curates themselves. There’s one of my sisters wild to 
marry Papa’s curate, but he won’t so much as look at her 
if he can help it.” 

“If he can look at you instead; that’s it, eh?” 

Claudia shrugged her shoulders. She knew she was be¬ 
having like a cad; but she so seldom had any sort of a 
chance to shine, and if she could not make her family out 
as something perfectly wonderful and altogether thrilling, 
they must, one and all, be fitted into the comic-man parts. 

“Is she anything like you?” 

‘‘Goodness gracious no; they’re none of them in the 
very least like me—would be horrified at the very idea.” 

“How many are there?” 

“Oh, stacks of them. Maude, who’s been married for 
four years, and has two little girls—that makes me an 
aunt, you know.” Claudia was proud of being an aunt, 
considered it to be the one thing Maude had ever done 
for her; but just because she was proud she spoke of it in 
a slighting, discounting sort of way, though adding, with 
a sudden burst of generosity: “Maude’s awfully pretty, 
the beauty of the family.” 

“Suppose I use my own judgment on that point, when 
I have the pleasure of seeing Maude, if ever:” 

“Well, she’s lovely; awfully fair, with reddish hair 
and blue eyes—blue as blue. Then there’s Gertrude who’s 
—Oh, I don’t know, but she’s somehow, somehow—it’s 
horrid of me, but somehow like a wardrobe.” 

“Oh, don’t I know the sort, solid and flat-fronted like 
a wardrobe. By Jove, that’s good!” cried Blagden, laugh¬ 
ing so heartily that Claudia ought to have been pleased 
with her wit: as it was, thoroughly ashamed of herself, 
she hurried on from bad to worse, offering up even 
Francie—Francie whom she loved—and loathing herself 
for it. 

“Then comes Frances—the second married one. She’s 
fair too; I’m the only really dark one of the family.” 

“Pretty?” 


50 


REPUTATION 


“Oh, prettyish, what Lamb calls ‘an insipid Madon- 
naish sort of miss.’ ” Claudia raced on, heaping all her 
goods in the shop-window, for where was the use of being 
the one book lover of the family unless one made a show 
of it? A totally wasted effort in regard to her present 
companion who rated a well-turned ankle far above all 
the grey colouring matter in the universe. 

Looking back over it all late that night, Claudia seemed 
to hear her own voice running on and on, rather higher 
than usual, broken by too frequent laughter—and she 
hated gigglers, making a joke of her home; half complain¬ 
ing, which was altogether beastly of her, for she had noth¬ 
ing on earth to complain about; pulling out her relations, 
almost everyone she knew, as though they were old clothes, 
ridiculous old clothes, from a dressing-up cupboard. The 
only comfort in the whole thing being that she had, actually 
had, spared her father and mother. “One would be a 
pretty awful sort of cad if one laughed at one’s own father 
and mother,” she thought. “But those others— Well, it 
was their own fault if they chose to be such sillies; one 
couldn’t help seeing the funny side of things, it was a 
mercy one did.” 

All the same, legitimate objects of ridicule as they might 
he and after all she did not say anything very bad—her 
cheeks blazed against the cool pillow in thinking it over: 
Francie too, it was impossible to salve her conscience by 
thinking of Francie as “one of those others!” She 
pressed her hands against her ears to keep out the remem¬ 
bered sound of her own words, Lord Blagden’s laugh, 
admiring and yet in some way insolent, as though he were 
dealing with a girl who was a good joke, and nothing 
more. And it had not been like that at first. With 
sudden decision Claudia sat up in bed, her shoulders high, 
her hands pressed flat down upon the mattress; pulling 
herself together, forcing herself to go over the whole thing 
carefully and dispassionately; breaking free from that 
maze of angry excitement which had held her throughout 


REPUTATION 


51 


the evening, with her brain running to and fro through 
it, like a shuttle through a web. 

It was only when she began trying to be funny that 
Blagden's manner towards her had changed. Up to 
that, apart from an occasional slip into compliments, 
jocular and almost fatherly, he had treated her with 
respect. 

One must not allow oneself to be funny with men, that's 
what it came to. They were beasts—beasts—beasts, 
beasts! All of them. At least, if they weren't beasts they 
were fools—the everyday Claudia pushed itself up at this. 
After all, her grandmother w T as right when she told her, 
as she so often did, that there were only three things which 
really mattered for a young girl: “To take care of her 
complexion, beware of men, and say her prayers regularly," 
adding cynically, in answer to Claudia’s question, that 
when she ceased to be a girl—declining from that fatal 
summit of twenty-five years—it was with the last alone 
that she need concern herself. “No need to worry about 
the stable door then!" was what Granny said. For old 
Mrs. Waring could be really vulgar at times, with a tang 
of the Georges, their arrogant grandeur and coarseness, 
o’er-topping the early Victorian gentility. 

And yet, “Beware," there was something cowardly in 
that. Claudia shifted the memory of her own misdeeds, 
replacing it, like a slide in a magic lantern, with the 
iniquities, the infinitely dark plottings of Blagden; wrong¬ 
ing him here, for pretty well all he did was entirely un¬ 
premeditated ; and it was, in truth, this that was wrong 
with him, he never thought. 

Well, anyhow, she, Claudia, had no longer any need to 
beware of men. She knew the worst, knew enough to keep 
clear of them altogether. “I’ve learnt my lesson once for 
all," that's what she told herself. “No ‘bewaring' for 
me. Catch me making a fool of myself a second time! 
Though who could have thought—Anyhow, the only way 
to treat them is as they deserve to be treated, like dirt 


52 REPUTATION 

under one’s feet; the beasts! Ugh, how stuffy everything 
is!” 

She jumped out of bed at this and, crossing the room in 
her nightgown—glad of the cool night air around her, 
blowing through her, the icy chilliness of the oilcloth 
beneath her feet—plunged her face into a basin of water 
which stood on the washstand; awaking Francie, who 
turned on her side, blinking at her in the white moon¬ 
light. 

“What on earth are you doing? You’ve washed your 
face once already to-night.” 

“Wretched headache — burning hot—” sputtered 
Claudia, dipping and sluicing. 

“I’d better get you some sal volatile, darling; perhaps 
you’re feverish. Come here and let me feel your hands.” 

“No, no, I’m all right. For goodness’ sake don’t worry 
me,” Claudia protested; but all the same she moved over 
to her sister’s bed, and stood there staring down at her. 
Francie looked such a fragile wraith of a woman sitting 
up there in the moonlight, with her fair plaits hanging 
straight at either side of her hollowed cheeks; and it was 
this which changed her so terribly, not only the hollows 
which made her look almost old, but the appearance they 
gave her of being somehow or other unmistakably married 
and done for; so touching in its way that Claudia’s heart 
was torn with contrition. What on earth was she made of 
—possessed of a devil, eh ? That she could have set Francie, 
poor Francie, up like a sort of cocoanut-shy that after¬ 
noon ? And for that man, too. Talk of men being beasts, 
that was altogether wrong; they might be brutes, but it 
was the women who were beasts, the distinction was 
clear in her mind. 

She bent forward to kiss Francie, and drew back, over¬ 
come by a sudden sense of decency, contrition. But her 
sister pulled her down, held her tightly enfolded with her 
small stick-like arms, and kissed her. 

“Dear Claudia, I am so sorry. It’s wretched to have a 


REPUTATION 


53 

headache like that. My dear, my dear, how hot your face 
is!” 

“It's all right, only—Look here, Francie, supposing I 
fetch my pillow and get into your bed.” 

Of course Francie was delighted; it was a real, an un¬ 
expected favour. Besides, she also was desolate, though she 
could scarcely have said why. She did not fret overmuch 
over the babies she had lost; all the little clothes she had 
made were almost too certain to come in for another 
time, things like that went on happening once one was 
married; neither, though she would not have admitted it 
even to herself, was she in any great hurry to rejoin her 
husband. All she really wanted was her own family, to 
feel like a girl again; at one with her parents and sisters; 
above all with Claudia—for after all marriage was a lonely 
sort of an affair. 

She dropped asleep very soon, while Claudia lay staring 
in front of her, struck by a sudden aspect of change in the 
familiar room, the furniture, the very knobs on the chest 
of drawers, as though she had never seen any of it before. 

How lovely and cool, fragile and altogether feminine, 
Francie’s cheek felt against her own. 

And yet Francie, too, had been kissed, kissed by a man; 
not once but again and again—and there were other things 
too, there must be other things. 

She crept out of her sister’s bed as this thought came 
to her; and taking her pillow went back to her own, where 
she lay stretched out straight on her back, plucking at her 
left cheek with her hand, pulling at it until the pain was 
almost unendurable, and yet in its own sharp way cleans¬ 
ing. For that was what had happened that afternoon, at 
the Leesden end of the Long Wood. 

Lord Blagden had kissed her, and she hated him as she 
could never have imagined it possible to hate anyone. 

One moment she thought that she could never bear to 
see him again; the next that she would like to see him, 
just to show him how she could stare. 


CHAPTER IV 


During the next few days Claudia was almost intoler¬ 
ably restless. It seemed impossible for her to stick to any 
one thing; if her hands went on for any length of time 
doing what they had begun to do, in much .the same 
spasmodic fashion as that in which a rabbit continues to 
kick after it is dead, sewing, arranging flowers, even plait¬ 
ing her own hair, in that smooth plate of plaits which was 
the proper thing for a girl who had her hair up and was 
yet not altogether “out,” her mind ricochetted off in an¬ 
other direction, quite suddenly and altogether on its own, 
a thing divorced from her body. In this way she did 
everything as badly as possible: made no clear end of 
anything, totally neglected the business of tidying up, 
leaving a trail behind her—damp leaves, clipping of stalks 
in the pantry sink and on the table when she arranged the 
vases, threads of cottons, loose reels, scissors wherever she 
had been sewing: an open piano, music all over the place; 
a shoe here, a shoe there. 

One day she dressed for dinner in a white nun’s veiling 
polonaise, a thing with a discreet square cut open at the 
neck, the bodice made in one with a looped tunic, im¬ 
mensely puffed out at the back—two yards double width for 
the puff alone was what it took—and was half way down 
the stairs before she discovered, through the chill wind 
about her knees, that she had forgotten to put on the 
skirt which belonged to it, pink to match the flat bows on 
the front; and not only that, for she had taken off and 
forgotten to replace her dark moreen petticoat by a white 
one, so that there was nothing more than a short scalloped 
flannel petticoat beneath the draped tunic. 

What the girl wanted was a good clean driving wind of 
54 


REPUTATION 


55 


action, busyness, the stinging tonic of real hard work; 
something that had to be done and done quickly to clear 
her brain; but everything at the Rectory was too com¬ 
fortable and well-ordered, too well blanketed in prosperity. 

Granny alone was sharp and bitter; stimulating too, 
stinging one’s self-respect, drawing one together, so to 
speak, in much the same way as a perry pear stings and 
draws one’s palate, setting one’s teeth on edge; perfectly 
horrid at times, yet always interesting, because one never 
really knew how to take her. 

She had no patience with Claudia; but for all that she 
liked her because, though she knew the girl feared her, she 
had the courage to face her out, answer her back, while the 
others feared and toadied, venturing, in their denser 
moments, upon that show of timid affection that she her¬ 
self called “pawing.” 

During the spring she had taken her granddaughter 
away for a week’s visit to a daughter of an old friend, 
with several daring daughters: young ladies of the period 
who said “awfully” and wore tea-gowns with long trains 
which impressed Claudia very much indeed, though, in 
her heart of hearts—the other self away back at the back 
of her ordinary self, cooler, harder and more critical, the 
core of that self-dependence and merciless judgment of 
anything in the way of humbug, which was the sword and 
buckler of her later years—she realised them as fools. 

One of these young people was possessed by a passion, 
confided to the little Waring girl, for a person named 
Oscar Wilde who had just gone to America to lecture. 

“Who does he lecture?” enquired Claudia with more 
pertness than innocence. But Victoria Best, who did not 
appear to hear her, went on expatiating upon the complete 
hopelessness of her passion, the well known fact that her 
idol lavished his entire affection upon what he called his 
own “cosmic self.” 

“And it’s not as though he pretends to anything else; 
that’s where he’s so splendid. He’ll tell you everything, 


56 


REPUTATION 


everything about himself/’ she went on, ending up with 
the complacent assurance that after all, great love was 
“inevitably and eternally” hopeless. 

It was during this visit, at luncheon time one day, that 
the young people tried to be familiar, in a hail-fellow- 
well-met fashion, with old Mrs. Waring, “chaffing’’ her, as 
they called it. 

The old lady bore it for a while, with a peculiar bland¬ 
ness which frightened her granddaughter; then launched 
a bolt which s^ Claudia’s face in a flame, left her wonder¬ 
ing, in a miserable way, if any of them would ever speak to 
her again. Though, far away in what would be now called 
her “subconscious self”—visualised in her own mind as 
the back of a house with a totally different view to that 
at the front—was a sense of sharp delight, the clapping 
of invisible hands. 

“I hope you don’t imagine that I mistake your im¬ 
pudence for wit, or your familiarity for friendship,” 
that’s what Granny had said; and years and years later 
this was one of the remembrances which gave Claudia real 
pleasure, making her wish that she had had the sense to 
cultivate the old lady, trimming her to greater exuberance 
like a rue bush. 

It was one morning during what might be called the 
incubation period of the Blagden fever—which was like a 
great many illnesses, if she had not have thought over it 
she would not have had it, though it was no less serious 
for this; and remember, that there had been no boy friends 
to waft her into womanhood with the help of mistletoe 
and calf love and immature flirtation—that Granny began 
to be really concerned about Claudia; the only person in 
the house to seek a reason for anything more subtle than 
a stomach-ache, leaping upon her with an exasperated: 
“Bless my soul, the girl’s an idiot!” 

Claudia, having opened a newspaper for her, a very 
special newspaper, the local product of that part of the 
world where the old lady had spent her girlhood and 


REPUTATION 


57 


replete with every detail of the funeral of a one-time friend, 
awoke suddenly at the sound of her grandmother’s voice 
to find herself with the wrapper in one hand while the 
paper itself flamed up the chimney. 

“Lord! What have I done now?” Claudia flushed to 
the roots of her hair, glanced distractedly from her grand¬ 
mother to the fire, and then began to laugh; not because 
she was amused, but because old Mrs. Waring was the only 
person—if we except Knowles, and, of course, he did not 
really count—with whom she was ever nervous, the only 
person she really respected; the only person whom she 
could never find herself, in her abominable cocksure way, 
making excuses for, with an “of course, in their time!” 

She dropped on her knees and made an effort to save at 
least part of the paper—the part containing that column 
with the broad black line round it of which her grand¬ 
mother had prophesied, “Mark my word for it, there’ll be 
more fuss about her dead than alive, as there is about 
all fools! ’ ’—scorching her hands and face, while the 
others shrieked at her to mind that the chimney didn’t 
catch on fire—“As if I could help the blasted chimney!” 
she muttered to herself. 

At last, finding all salvage hopeless, seeing the black line 
white on the charred mass, she beat it down with the 
poker, deadening the fire, littering the freshly done grate, 
casting an atmosphere of complete and sordid gloom over 
the entire room. 

The two youngest girls giggled, and Claudia turned 
upon them with a sharp: “Shut up you idiots!” 

“Claudia, Claudia! Keally you’re getting impossible. 
You do a silly thing, and then vent your ill-temper upon 
your sisters. You’d better apologise to your grandmother, 
and take the hearth-brush and sweep up some of that mess,” 
said Mrs. Waring with a calmness which might hide any 
sort of irritation. 

Claudia sat back on her heels and swept savagely; while 
Gertrude, with a supercilious air, moved forward a step 


58 


REPUTATION 


or so, holding back her skirt with one hand as she did so, 
and took a neat pack of printed leaflets from the mantel¬ 
shelf, blowing upon them first, for the wind was coming 
down the chimney and there were minute fragments of 
charred paper over everything. She was dressed in an 
ugly reddish shade of brown with a layer upon layer of 
scallops over the skirt; a tall thin girl with a long face and 
tight lips, rather high shoulders, small waist and narrow 
hips, never so much as a hair out of place, her fringe an 
even flat fuzziness. 

“She’s just like an earwig,” thought Claudia. 

“You’ve a smudge of black on your nose,” Gertrude 
looked down upon her, nipping off her words as though 
with small, earwiggy pincers. “I suppose I’d better send 
the G. F. S. notices out to-day, eh, Papa, the school- 
children can take them round. To-morrow’s Saturday and 
there won’t be anyone to send. Then I can speak to Miss 
Ogelvie and Mrs. Phillpots about the tea, and ask Mr. 
Ashton if he’ll mind seeing that the piano’s moved into 
the schoolroom. The parish room’s not big enough, is 
it?” 

The Rector grunted. Mrs. Waring had taken up her 
knitting, for it was twenty to ten and she did not see the 
cook until ten. “The Fields are coming to dinner. I 
hope no one minds a cold lunch,” she said. “We might 
have soup, or, of course, there’s hash—but that new 
kitchenmaid’s no good, and one must save cook as much as 
possible.” 

“Turn out that dog! Do you hear? Turn out that 
dog, I say!” The Rector, who had been ruminating peace¬ 
fully over his last morsel of toast, the butter thick be¬ 
neath the marmalade, his last quarter cup of coffee, broke 
out with one of his sudden fierce barks as Pickles came 
sidling into the room through three inches of open 
doorway, hurling himself upon his mistress. “Claudia! 
Claudia! How many times have I told you I won’t have 
that dog in the house?” 


.59 


REPUTATION 

“I’m sure I don’t know, I haven’t counted,” said 
Claudia pertly, and, rising to her feet, left the room, 
whistling to, snapping her fingers at Pickles, who bounded 
beside her with the hem of her dress in his mouth. 

Miss Irwin, the governess, raked in her two charges with 
her eyes. “Well,” she said in her bright manner, “I 
suppose it’s time we did something for our living. ” 

Gertrude picked up the hearth-brush which lay upon the 
rug, and finished tidying the hearth in a deft and com¬ 
plete fashion, with a mental picture of what it would mean 
for any young man to be blessed with such a wife; then 
poked the fire into a blaze. 

“I suppose that will be all right, Papa, to ask Mr. 
Ashton about the piano'?” She could not leave a thing 
alone. If she wanted to do it she would; and yet, like 
some persistent boring insect, she would give no one any 
rest until she was assured of their complete approbation. 
Lacking approbation, she found some sort of plateau of 
high moral ground upon which to take her stand. 

Even over so simple a matter as going for a walk, or not 
going for a walk, there was an elaborate process of justifi¬ 
cation to be gone through. If she went it must be for her 
health and because our bodies are given us, not for pleasure, 
but to keep them in proper condition; if she did not go 
it was because other people might find time to enjoy them¬ 
selves, but she herself did not think it right, etc., etc. 

“I don’t see what Ashton’s got to do with moving the 
piano. Anyone can do that,” said the Rector testily. 

“Well, you see, really it’s Mr. Ashton who’s getting it 
up—the concert after the tea, I mean. He begged me to 
help him; but moving the piano, that’s another thing; he 
might think it cool of me. But, of course, whatever you 
think. Then there’s the programme. I did say I’d help 
with the programme, and Miss Smyth wants to sing ‘In 
the Gloaming.’ ” 

“Sentimental bosh!” boomed the Rector. 

“That’s what I thought. But I must consult Mr. Ash- 


60 


REPUTATION 


ton, as you see, Papa, it really is his concert, and he’d think 
it so odd— Then, of course, I could speak about the piano 
at the same time. But ‘In the Gloaming,’ I agree with 
you; it does seem like putting things into the girls ’ heads, 
doesn’t it?” 

“I’d like to know who put it into your head to go chas¬ 
ing about after that unfortunate young man as you do,” 
remarked Granny meditatively, ending up with the 
sententious wisdom of: “Follow and they flee, flee and 
they follow,” while Gertrude—pretending not to hear, but 
with a good deal of extra colour in her face—traced along 
the lines of a calendar with one finger, crossing off certain 
dates with the silver pencil from her chatelaine. 

“That’s Friday and Tuesday and Wednesday. It’s 
really wonderful how the weeks go.” 

Francie, who was reading her African letter, gave a 
little cry as her sister went out of the room. “Oh dear, 
Frankie wants me to sail on the twenty-first of November. 
What can I do ? The twenty-first! Why, it’s the 
eighteenth of October now.” 

“We’ll have to go into Cheltenham and get your 
things; it’s better than Oxford—but anyhow, so awkward 
buying thin clothes at this time of year,” said Mrs. War¬ 
ing, going on with her knitting. Then: “I think cook 
might manage shepherd’s pie; it’s such a chilly day.” 

“But I—I—before Christmas—!” Francie’s little face 
was flushed, her eyes full of tears. 

“A girl’s place is with her husband, my dear,” her 
mother’s tone was mildly inflexible, and Francie, gathering 
the loose sheets.of her letter together, made for the door; 
only just escaping a collision with Miles who was coming 
in with his tray. 

“Don’t worry about me, my dear.” The Rector had 
risen from his place at the table and was standing in front 
of the rejuvenated fire, with his coat-tails raised. “I’ll 
have to have lunch in Overton anyhow. There’s a diocesan 
meeting; and after that I’m bound to put in an appear- 


REPUTATION 


61 


ance on the bench; everyone’s so busy with shooting 
parties now. Then Fountain tells me I’d better see about 
some more hay. Really, there’s no end of things to see 
to; a busy day; I don’t know which I dread most—Friday 
or Saturday—there’s Sunday, of course, but then Sunday’s 
bound to be hard for us poor parsons.” 

He bent forward, flicked a tiny speck of dust off the 
knee of his smooth, very black broadcloth, and pulled down 
his clerical waistcoat, preening himself like some stout and 
well fed bird. His clothes always looked perfectly new; 
they never fell into creases like other people’s clothes, and 
perhaps this was due to his figure, the way he held him¬ 
self; for it is creases which gather dust, conduce to shab¬ 
biness, and if people let themselves go, loll, their clothes go 
with them. His tailor said: “If you cut for a curve you 
are sure of a curve with the Rural Dean, and that’s more 
than can be said for most.” 

His linen was fresh, he had a clean white shirt with stiff 
cuffs each day. His gold links and watch chain shone; the 
buttons of his coat and waistcoat, covered with a sort of 
fine black braid, showed not the faintest hint of rubbing or 
fraying. He wore a white collar with turned-back points, 
much smaller than Gladstone’s—for Gladstone was a 
pestilential Radical—looking upon all round collars with 
contempt as only fit for what he had been known to speak 
of as “your sucking curates.” His stately and rather 
noble, Roman Emperorish face, marred by a certain 
coarseness of the nostrils, was freshly shaved and rosy; his 
closely trimmed mutton-chop whiskers and hair were 
silvery white and shining; while the inconsiderable bald 
patch looked as though it had been polished. 

He took out his pipe from his pocket and filled it very 
carefully, pressing down the tobacco with his little finger; 
reached for the matches from the mantelpiece, looked at 
his mother, who after one sidelong glance was gazing 
straight in front of her, and put it back in his pocket. 

“You’ll have to look after that girl or, mark my words, 


62 


REPUTATION 


you’ll be having trouble with her.” Granny’s small plump 
white hands were folded over the smooth, generous curve 
of her person, the something which began in a plastron 
and ended in a stomacher: cream tinted lace with flat 
purple bows. 

“Running after the curate, eh, Mother?” The Rector, 
who was feeling very comfortable after his breakfast, 
gave a short tolerant laugh. 4 ‘ Oh, well, girls will be girls! ’ ’ 

“Pm not speaking of Gertrude; there’s no need to 
worry yourself about that young person; she’ll only run 
after the sort of thing she’s quite capable of catching, take 
my word for it.—Tut tut, where that girl got those flat 
feet of hers beats me. You’ve got quite nice feet, Marian; 
but perhaps your family-” 

“Four plain, two purl, four plain.” Mrs. Waring 
always counted when she felt herself growing irritated 
with her mother-in-law.—“I really don’t think any of my 
family—two plain.” 

“Exactly!” said Granny, very pat, with an air of 
innocent, childish delight. 

“Well now, come, come,” put in the Rector, who always 
had been, and always would be, frightened of his mother, 
felt like a small boy in her presence. He allowed himself 
to be ruled by his wife too, but that was another matter, 
that was sheer laziness. It had, indeed, become a habit, 
like all his ways; but he broke through it in moments 
of anger, those sudden rages which swept over him like a 
tornado, and at times like these Mrs. Waring’s placidity 
was completely broken. But not for the life of him would 
he have dared to lose his temper before his mother. To 
think of him—six foot in height and what they call a 
fine man—as really imagining that the small, round, 
Victorian-looking figure might suddenly bound from its 
chair, loosen the braces from those smooth broadcloth 
trousers, and administer a spanking, is beyond conception; 
but the fact remains that the memory of such things was 
still so amazingly vivid in his usually complacent mind— 


REPUTATION 


63 

with the very sting of a slipper sole—that it haunted his 
dreams, lying in bed at his wife’s side; while he felt no 
more sure of himself, his place in the world, in his mother’s 
presence than he had done on his first day at a preparatory 
school. 

“No, no, it’s Claudia I’m thinking of; and if it wasn’t 
that you take it for granted that all your children are 
made after the same pattern, you’d be thinking of her 
too,” said the old lady, with that air of level exasperation 
which one uses in talking to very small children. 

“Claudia!” 

“Really, Henry, that’s a very bad habit you’ve got into 
of repeating my words. I’d try and get out of it if I were 
you, or when I’m dead you won’t find anything to say.” 

“But Claudia-” 

“There you are again. Bless my soul, the man’s an 
idiot.” 

“What is it, Mother? What’s wrong with Claudia?” 
put in Mrs. Waring. 

“What’s wrong with her! It’s not only what’s wrong 
with her now, it’s what will be wrong with her. If that 
girl’s not married before she’s twenty, mark my words 
for it, there’s not a man that’ll have the courage to tackle 
her. She’s got a will there’s no breaking, and a temper 
—a most un-Christian temper, I call it. I’m sure I don’t 
know who she’s got it from. . . . Henry, I wonder if I 
might ask you to give me an arm out of the room, or ring 
for McCloud? I never have been accustomed to having 
men smoke in my presence, and I’m sure I don’t know 
why, now I’m an old woman-” 

“Dear, dear! Really I’m very sorry, Mother. I 
wasn’t thinking what I was doing.” The Rector, who 
had lighted his pipe in sheer absentness of mind, extin¬ 
guished it as best he could, enclosing it in his firm, 
plump, white hand. “As for the question of marriage,” 
he tried to speak jocularly, gathering up his correspond¬ 
ence in the other hand, turning to leave the room, “I’m 




64 


REPUTATION 


out of all that, you know—altogether a matter for you 
ladies/ ’ 

“Well, not altogether, Henry/’ 

Old Mrs. Waring shot this comment after him, with the 
curiously triumphant mildness common to her when she 
said the sort of things that—oh, well, that the other ladies 
in Leesden would not think of saying; while her daughter- 
in-law glanced at her sideways, then rose, gathering up 
her knitting. 

Granny could not be really vulgar, of course, because 
she was The Honourable, a daughter of Lord Langlisle, 
but all the same—Oh, well, it wasn’t her —Mrs. Waring’s 
—style. “I think I’ve just got time to slip down to the 
greenhouses and see Hobbes about the cinerarias; I’m so 
anxious to have a good show this year, they’re so useful in 
pots in the house,” she said, and left the room; this being 
the one weapon she had against the old lady who required 
a considerable amount of hoisting from her chair; for she 
resented, in her mild and obstinate way, any sort of inter¬ 
ference with the management of her children, more 
especially with Claudia whom she realised as, in some ways 
beyond her, almost as much beyond her as Granny herself. 

And really there was a sort of likeness between the two; 
not in appearance, but in their mental outlook, their way 
of taking things. Of course one could not say it, really 
ought not to so much as think it—for one always wanted 
to be kind to old people, and there was nothing quite so 
vulgar as family dissension—but it had often struck Mrs. 
Waring that Claudia’s grandmother was not altogether a 
good companion for the girl, who was frightened of her 
and yet always showing off before her, defying her. 

“It’s sad to think of a clergyman’s mother being so 
altogether worldly,” she said to herself; and then, opening 
the conservatory door, inhaling the moist fragrance, took 
out her watch from her little breast pocket, and finding 
that she had only five minutes to spare before her inter¬ 
view with the cook, plunged into the subject of cinerarias 


REPUTATION 


65 


with the head gardner who was watering the plants. 

Left alone in the dining-room, Granny sat with folded 
hands, half drowsing, blinking at the fire like a comfortable 
cat. In a few minutes her maid would come and fetch her, 
establish her in the well warmed drawing-room; but she 
was in no hurry, she was very comfortable where she was, 
and she liked the smell of breakfast which still hung 
about the room. 

The Rector in his great coat and white muffler opened 
the door. “Miles—I beg your pardon, Mother, I thought 
Miles was here—Oh, there you are, Miles.” 

The butler who had come back with the crumb tray and 
brush answered: “Yes, sir,” as though there might be 
some sort of a doubt about it, and bent his head a trifle 
sideways while his master instructed him as to the wine to 
be served that evening. 

“Claret, Miles, eh—yes, I think claret and—Mr. and 
Mrs. Field, isn’t it?” 

“And Mr. Ashton I believe, sir.” 

Ah yes, Mr. Ashton. Yes, yes, I see—well, what about 
a bottle of that port I bought at Mr. Cross’s sale, the 
seventy-nine ? ’ ’ 

“Yes, sir.” 

“That’s all, I think. Good-bye, Mother; take care of 
yourself. ’ ’ 

“Henry.” 

‘ * Yes—yes, what is it, Mother ? The carriage is waiting. ’ ’ 

“Have you got a cold in your head, Henry?” Her 
voice was dangerously meek and he stared, wondering 
what he had done now. 

“No, no, not that I know of. Why?” 

“I thought you must have. I suppose it’s because I’m 
behind the times, but in my days it was not customary 
for a gentleman to come into a lady’s presence with his 
hat on his head. Of course if you had a cold-” 

“Dear, dear, I must apologise, Mother. I didn’t 
rea li se -” The Rector snatched his hat from his head, 



GG 


REPUTATION 


his fine face suffused with a deeper crimson. “I—as a 
matter of fact I was actually out of the front door when 
I remembered that I hadn't spoken to Miles about the 
wine. I—I'm sure I—" He stammered, glanced side¬ 
ways at the man-servant who was folding the tablecloth 
with meticulous care, and made for the door, replacing his 
hat as he descended the broad white steps towards the 
carriage and the pair of shining bays which stood waiting 
for him. 

He drove two horses because he hated going slowly up 
the hills, inconsiderable in height but long and numerous, 
hard upon one horse, which distinguished the vale-like 
country. But to balance this, because he disapproved of 
anything in the way of show, anything flashy in connec¬ 
tion with the cloth, he used a small wagonette in place 
of a phaeton. 

“As if one went to heaven any better all sideways like 
a crab," was what Claudia said; for she, who hated 
wagonettes, preferred the high, yellow varnished luggage 
cart with one horse. 

There was a distinct touch of frost in the air; the sky 
was a clear, very pale blue; the woods lay like shining 
plaques of copper on the slopes, misted over and more 
deeply tinted in the hollows; while the freshly turned 
plough was a rich brown, the stubble shining and silvery. 
It was pleasant going; pleasant to hfear the quick uniform 
beat of hoofs on the firm road, just sufficiently set by 
frost, up hill and down. The Rector, who was driving 
himself, with his man at his side, saluted his parishioners 
with his whip hand as he passed through the well kept 
village; noted the gardens, the dahlias blackened by the 
frost, the golden-rods and marigolds still ablaze. 

The old men pulled their forelocks, the old women 
bobbed, pleased to see him, realised him as their spiritual 
pastor and master for the simple reason that he was a 
real gentleman “an’ no mistake about it neither"; for the 
business of bringing up a family on eleven shillings a 


REPUTATION 


67 

week was chastening, conducive to a humble and, curiously 
enough, contented state of mind. 

He passed Gertrude in her brown dress, short brown 
coat, tight at the waist with fluted basque, and boat-shaped 
hat with high upstanding bows, and waved his whip to 
her, thinking that she was a ladylike-looking girl; but with 
none of that warmth and softening of heart that came to 
him when his mind glanced off from her to Claudia—that 
minx Claudia with her well turned ankles. One thought 
of a filly, clean limbed, slender and thoroughbred, a fine 
mover, when one thought of Claudia. 


CHAPTER V 


Every morning after breakfast Claudia read French— 
wading through an intolerably dull volume of Memoirs, 
for the simple reason that no really nice French books 
were ever anything but dull—for one half-hour; a really 
improving English book, more or less of a classic, for 
another half-hour; and practised on the piano for a third. 

She did not want to do any of these things. She wanted 
to learn Italian, had actually bought an Italian gram¬ 
mar, and studied it every evening before dinner, writing 
exercises and jotting down long lists of words, getting on 
really well with it, excepting for the pronunciation, be¬ 
cause it was her own choice; while the rest of what were 
now called her ‘‘studies’’ as apart from lessons—English, 
French and music, a mere continuation of the hated rule 
of a despised governess—she gave into, in a sort of way, 
her mind elsewhere, her eyes continually fixed upon the 
clock, for the drear reason that all girls did something 
of that sort until they were married or altogether grown-up 
old maids like “that Gertrude and her curate.” 

On this particular morning, the morning of the con¬ 
flagration, she went upstairs to what was known as “the 
young ladies’ room” in no temper for work; though, hav¬ 
ing poked the fire savagely, she took out her books and 
flung them down on the table, pushing aside Gertrude’s 
neatly piled pamphlets, lists of engagements and resolu¬ 
tions. There was always a slip of some sort laid out on 
the top of everything else; to-day it was ‘ 4 To make up my 
mind not to feel impatient when people waste my time by 
talking about worldly things, and to go and see old Mrs. 
Furster and read the Bible to her between lunch and tea,” 


REPUTATION 69 

—with a postscript written np the side: ‘‘Say from 3.30 
to 4.” 

Mrs. Fnrster was the greatest grumbler, the most hope¬ 
less cadger, the smelliest old fraud in the parish. When 
any of the family at the Rectory spoke of her, it was 
generally as “that wretched old Mrs. Furster, again,” 
which showed that Gertrude must have been feeling espe¬ 
cially embittered and prone to martyrdom, more suitable 
than ever for a curate’s wife, when she wrote that mem¬ 
orandum. 

“Flee and they follow, follow and they flee.” The two 
things—for these words were a continuous refrain from 
Granny’s lips—linked themselves up in Claudia’s mind, 
as, with a scornful curl of her lips she twisted up the scrap 
of paper, flicked it into the fire, and stood looking down 
at her own books, moodily enough for a moment or so; 
then, with the assertion that she’d be hanged if she would 
do any work that morning, she swung out of the door and 
raced up the second flight of stairs to her bedroom, Pickles 
yapping at her heels. 

Francie was standing by the window, mopping her eyes 
with a small screwed-up wisp of wet handkerchief. 

Claudia—who was determined she would not look at her, 
did not want, could not do with, any more fusses, was 
wild to get away out into the open—kicked off both her 
slippers, sending them flying, one here, one there, and be¬ 
gan to lace her boots; broke a lace and said “Damn” with 
a sort of savage cheerfulness, hugging at the knot with 
her mouth all twisted on one side, her chin stuck out. 

“He’ll spoil your shoe,” said Francie, gulping. 

“Let him spoil it. What the deuce does it matter to 
me?” 

Claudia glanced sideways with contempt at her dull, 
low-heeled house-shoe, then laughed to see the way in which 
Pickles was prising his front paws against it; pulling back 
on his haunches and tearing at the bow, pretending it 
was a rat, shaking it furiously, looking at his mistress 


70 REPUTATION 

sideways, laughing at her in his doggy way, his eyes shin¬ 
ing like onyx. 

Francie sighed and shook her head, casting her eyes 
down at the open letter in her hand, turning again to the 
window. She was quite certain that Claudia would come 
up behind her and put her arm round her shoulder, then 
she could tell her everything about this business of going 
out to Africa in such a hurry. “I don’t know how I shall 
ever manage about my clothes.” She really thought this, 
imagined that it was the clothes difficulty that baulked her. 
In reality she shrank from the thought of her husband, 
married life, more babies, with all the discomfort, the feel¬ 
ing ill for so long, the final agony—for which so far there 
had been nothing to show. She had not strength and vital¬ 
ity enough for all this, it was monstrous in connection 
with such a mentally and physically unformed, thin- 
blooded creature; like the setting in motion of some gi¬ 
gantic machinery for mingled creation and annihilation, 
with a small white moth, the sort which is crushed by a 
touch of the finger, as its sole objective. If she could have 
bought a baby as one buys a doll she would have adored 
it; though, of course, she could never say so. 

Claudia did not come near her, however; went out of 
the room without another word, banging the door behind 
her; and she began to cry in earnest. She pressed her 
forehead against the pane of the window, but this was no 
good. She wanted someone’s shoulder upon which to lay 
her head, the ordinary, kindly every-day affection of 
relatives. 

A mental picture of Africa, as she had heard of it, 
swam across her vision: sand and scorching winds and 
quantities of flies: interwoven with this was that other 
picture of Frankie’s face as she had sometimes seen it: 
red, with twitching lips. 

The only thing that her mother had told her about 
marriage was: ‘‘There are disagreeable things . . . things 
that are not quite nice, that it will be your duty as a 


REPUTATION 


71 


married woman to submit to. And, of course, you must 
remember that everything your husband does is always 
quite proper and right.” 

Submit! Oh, but she didn’t like it, couldn’t stand it! 
“And they say it’s so hot out there; that will make it 
worse, much worse!” She spoke the words aloud; there 
were no tears in her eyes or on her cheeks now; they 
seemed to be dried up by the scorching winds of Africa 
streaming out to meet her, draw her to them. And yet it 
wasn’t that she did not love Frankie. “I do love him, 
I do,” she said to herself, “only—only ” 

The door opened and her mother came into the room, 
with a pencil and note-book in her hand. 

“I thought as I’ve finished with cook and got that off 
my mind—I’m sure I don’t know how you’re going to 
manage with black servants, never being able to see if 
they’re clean or anything—we might start making out our 
list, Francie dear. You’ll want white dresses and hol- 
lands and-” 

Mrs. Waring broke off, and laying down her book and 
pencil, collected Claudia’s shoes, and placed them side by 
side under the dressing-table, shaking her head over the 
torn bow. 

“Beally, darling, I do think, as a married woman, you 
might try and use your influence to help make your sister 
a little more orderly.” 

She picked up her book and pencil again and sat down 
in the window seat, smiling a little to show that she was 
not really vexed with Francie; her fine-skinned pink and. 
white face was as round and almost as smooth as a child’s, 
the blue eyes bright and clear, a little hard. “It’s a good 
thing poor Francie married young,” she thought to her¬ 
self. “She’s too thin, and girls like that age so quickly.” 

Out loud she said: “Plenty of thin dresses and under¬ 
wear, and you’ll want at least one new trunk. And then, 
with the sun and all, dark glasses, and one of those things 
—toupees is it, or topees?” 




72 


REPUTATION 


Francie was not sure, and, for a moment or so, the two 
gazed at each other with pursed lips; then Mrs. Waring 
wrote down a word which might equally well serve for 
cither. 

“We can look it up in the Army and Navy catalogue 
later,” she said. 


CHAPTER VI 


Olaudia went out through the kitchen garden, pressing 
her way between the bespangled red-berried, feathery 
masses of the asparagus bed and the brussels sprouts bed; 
crossed a smooth strip of finely raked soil made ready with 
an almost reverent care for some other stupid and unap¬ 
preciated vegetable, and out through the small green gate 
set deep in the wall at the back of the yew arbour, brush¬ 
ing aside the frosted spiders * webs spun in a fantastic 
barrier across it. For, since they had all grown too old to 
play at robbers, the arbour was rarely entered, and she 
did not remember having been out of that gate since she 
was quite a little girl. It was, indeed, stuck so tight, the 
wood so swollen into the framework, that she had great 
difficulty in opening it, bruised her shoulder pressing 
against it. 

And yet, difficult as it was, she would not have given in 
for worlds; she had that sort of feeling. It was not so 
much a question of time, getting there quickly, as the feel¬ 
ing of making an absolutely straight bee line for some¬ 
thing, for—well, for Leesgrove Woods. 

Once out of the garden she cut off in a diagonal direc¬ 
tion across the long ten-acre field which sloped down to 
the brook, ignoring the bridge; muddying her boots with 
deep brown mud, all trodden by cattle on the near side of 
it; jumping and catching at a twisted oak, its feet deep in 
soil and amber-tinted fern, at the further side; pushing 
through the hedge, with the curled, brown hazel leaves 
rough as furniture velvet against her face, the trail of 
frost-blackened clematis tagged over with its withered 
beard; the crimson and black berries of the mealy-guilder 
rose, shining like jewels; the brighter wickeder scarlet of 


74 


REPUTATION 


bryony with its spear-head leaves, its spiral wire-like ten¬ 
drils. The blackberry leaves were crimson and orange; 
there were the bright scarlet berries—an infinite number 
of scarlet berries and all different shades—of lords-and- 
ladies on the bare ground betwixt the fern, where the roots 
of saplings and bent dwarfs of trees were pushed up into 
the open, grotesquely twisted, decorated with yellow lichen 
and tiny scarlet toadstools. 

The field beyond shone with dew and frost and sunshine, 
half golden, half silvery like a piece of very old silver- 
gilt plate. At one side of it was a shed with a thatched 
roof, three bent and thickened Scotch firs; beyond this lay 
ploughed land and turnips, a coppice, and stretch of 
stubble, and another copice. In between these pasture and 
plough were three one-storied cottages in a line, all sagged 
in the middle under the heavy grey stone tiles, the weight 
of their years. There were still sunflowers in the gardens; 
from quite a long way off Claudia could see them blazoned, 
brazen faced, on the landscape. In front of the two end 
cottages there was washing hung out to dry: grotesque 
and rather improper caricatures of men and women, puffed 
out by the wind, looking much as the men and women 
themselves must look to the gods sitting above them. 
Claudia thought of this. Her mind freed from the pres¬ 
ence of four walls ran to and fro like a silver mouse—that 
was a ridiculous idea she had had as a little girl; certain 
thoughts, quick and fine and careless, glittering like silver 
mice. 

“The gods are happy, 

They turn on all sides their shining eyes 
And see beneath them the earth and men.” 

That was a part of the poem which she loved, the poem 
about the Centaurs—Blagden was rather like that, a mag¬ 
nificent, sixteen-three chestnut. She thought of this with 
a bubble of inward laughter, then jerked her thoughts 
away from him, frowning at herself. 


REPUTATION 


75 


There was no washing in front of the middle cottage, 
though it was a Monday morning, for an old bachelor lived 
there and did for himself: washing his one shirt and 
occasionally some other garments on a Saturday night, 
banking up the fire and leaving them in front of it 
to dry. 

He had once been laid up with a broken leg all alone in 
the cottage, and offended Gertrude very much by refusing 
to allow her to read the Bible to him on the grounds that 
he was “a schollared me ’sen/ ’ Claudia had gone to see 
him, too, finding him in bed with his Sunday suit and 
workaday corduroy suit, caked with mud, piled on top of 
him to eke out the thin blankets. She had peeled and 
boiled some potatoes for his dinner, finding them in a box 
under the bed, a good deal sprouted; while he lay and 
watched, very critical of her wasteful methods, the medley 
of clothes drawn up under his unshaved chin, his eyes like 
small cut jet beads, suspicious and cunning. 

She rather liked that sort of thing. 4 ‘Not because it’s 
doing good, but just because it’s fun, apart from the smells. 
If it didn’t amuse me, I wouldn’t do it,” she would ex¬ 
plain, forced off at a tangent from Gertrude, with her ex¬ 
asperating parade of duty. 

Skirting along the edge of a wood, with the plough to 
one side of her and Pickles scouring the hedges at the 
other, she wrinkled her nose over the memory of the smell 
of old Job’s room. 

Lord Blagden had smelt of very good cigars and very 
superior soap. It was, of course, disgusting of him to kiss 
her; but oh, how nice he had smelt! 

As she stooped to struggle with the hasp of the gate 
leading into the Long Wood—Leesgrove Wood—she noticed 
a scrap of black charred paper on the front of her skirt, 
for she had unbuttoned her ulster which flew wide at either 
side of her. The blue serge itself had the acrid smell of 
burnt paper, a “housey” smell so altogether different to 
burnt leaves. 


76 REPUTATION 

Fancy burning Granny's paper like that! No wonder 
she was angry! 

But everyone was always fussing about something or 
other, all shut up together in those close rooms, pretending 
that they liked each other just because they were relations. 

Claudia flicked off the clinging scrap of paper; then, as 
she could not get the gate open, climbed it, while Pickles 
wriggled underneath the lowest bar and started off straight 
away in some quest of his own. Poaching, well, where was 
the difference between them—the dog and the girl? If 
anyone had put it to Claudia then, just like that, good 
naturedly and tolerantly, not pointing out, but just lay¬ 
ing before her the fact that what's forgivable in dogs— 
one’s own dogs—is an altogether mean sort of sport where 
other people’s husbands are concerned, she would have 
disclaimed the very idea of any such thing. But for all 
that she would have remembered it, faced it out in the 
end, for she was honest, if anything, and it might have 
made the whole difference. But what was wrong with her 
life, her period, above all others, was the fact that no one 
ever did face out anything, unless they were totally un¬ 
able to help it; lived in an atmosphere of glamour and 
verbal humbug. 

The ground at the further side of the gate was deep with 
dead leaves and black mud, crisp with frost; the wood 
itself smelt deliciously of dry bracken and moistish tree- 
trunks. In an odd sort of panic at the thought of walk¬ 
ing straight along the wide middle drive and meeting 
Blagden face to face, Claudia plunged through the thick¬ 
est of the undergrowth down to the stream at the lower 
edge of the wood, and scrambled along the edge of it, slip¬ 
ping and sliding; high on the bank at one moment, down 
in the mud at the other. 

She had a shortish stick with a knob of lead at one end 
of it in her hand, a patent of Piers and her own, especially 
invented to throw at water-rats. A couple of years ago 
when Piers was at home they had become very expert in 


REPUTATION 


77 


the use of this weapon and many a rat along the edges of 
the streams and Leesgrove Lake had fallen a victim to it. 
Piers knew how to manage Knowles; there had been no 
sort of a feud then, for the head keeper, who had taken no 
notice whatever of Claudia, was grateful to her brother 
for ridding him of the pests which ate his wild-ducks ’ 
eggs; while Pickles—the outcome of an advertisement, 
offering a bantam cock and two hens for sale or exchange 
in the Exchange and Mart—had not yet appeared upon 
the scene. 

Perhaps it was the effect of being in the navy, but Piers 
had a grand air which offended nobody; an air which 
Claudia was totally unable to catch, what Piers called ‘ ‘ that 
tread on the tail o’ me coat way of yours.” 

She had not taken out her knobbed stick since Piers went 
away, after that one delightful leave when he seemed still 
so completely a boy. There had been one time since then, 
when he came home for a couple of nights, just before start¬ 
ing off on a fresh voyage, suddenly and completely grown 
up, standing on the hearthrug in the study, talking to his 
father very much as though they were the same age; de¬ 
fending him in one of Claudia’s moments of revolt, as 
“quite a decent old chap if you take him the right way”; 
and this is a marked epoch in family life when some one 
of the elder members begins to make allowances for, al¬ 
most side with, the parents. 

Claudia had had no one to do anything with now. One 
wonders if she had a pathetic notion of putting Blagden in 
the place of the once youthful Piers. But no, that was im¬ 
possible, for, of course, she was grown up herself, alto¬ 
gether—well, almost altogether—grown up. And yet in 
what odd streaks that grown-upness does run. The very 
idea of thinking that if she met Lord Blagden, as she made 
sure she would do, she might impress him by showing him 
the way in which she could kill water-rats! 

She had it all quite clear in her mind: he would ask what 
the knob on the end of her stick was for, and she would 


78 


REPUTATION 


answer—if she really did make up her mind to speak to 
him again—‘‘Oh, that’s what I use for shying at water- 
rats ! ’ ’—easily like that. 

Queer enough the whole thing: this adventuring into 
the woods with a feeling of wildness and excitement, the 
mingled excitement of the hunter and hunted; coming back 
at all when she had sworn never to set foot in the place 
again, and, above all, planning what she meant to say to 
a person she had determined never to speak to again; the 
whole pose of the Diana engrossed in her own sort of 
sport—queer, and yet by no manner of means new or 
peculiar to any one girl, or any one particular period. 

Pickles joined her and dug furiously in the bank of the 
stream, scattering the soil with his hind feet. But there 
was not so much as a single water-rat to be seen. Once 
Claudia caught sight of a fat trout lying in the pool under 
the tangled roots of an alder; and taking off her coat, 
turning up the sleeve of her garibaldi, and lying down flat 
upon the bank, wriggling her way in among the ferns, the 
tangle of bryony, she plunged in her arm. But she did 
not get the trout, for to tickle trout you must have one idea 
only in your mind, be sure and swift as lightning in your 
every movement, eye and hand and brain working at 
once—working like light. It resembles fencing in this; 
no good playing to a gallery as Claudia, who could tickle 
trout better than Piers himself, was doing now; an empty 
gallery too, more disturbing than the most critical audi¬ 
ence, occupied by the imagination alone. 

She rose to her feet feeling rather sheepish; and rubbing 
the mud as best she could from her knees, pulling on her 
coat, she made her way up to the centre drive again, 
whistling to Pickles, who immediately started off in the 
opposite direction. 

She walked to the very end of the drive and came out of 
it on the bracken-grown edge of the park, which dipped 
and rose again to the house: an immense square-fronted 
Queen Anne house of dull red brick, with white trimmings; 


REPUTATION 


79 


ugly enough in all conscience—rendered all the more so by 
the addition of a monstrous conservatory that the late 
Duchess had been assured was an almost perfect copy of 
the Crystal Palace—and yet in some way imposing, with a 
dignity of its own. The sort of house in connection with 
which one could imagine nothing sordid, or hurried or 
mean; despite the fact that the late Duchess had been 
notoriously “near” over her housekeeping, expected to 
get her under-kitchen-maids for nothing, in consideration 
of the advantages they derived from working themselves 
to skin and bone in a ducal family, wearing a particular 
shaped bonnet at church every Sunday and being so care¬ 
fully shepherded that no follower were possible. She 
even, or so they said—though she was a Duchess—locked up 
the lump sugar herself after tea each day; this report be¬ 
ing attributable to the same lady who discovered that the 
reason why the champagne was always served to the mem¬ 
bers of her own sex first at dinner, was due to the fact 
that it was of too inferior a quality to be offered to the 
men. 

For all that—and there are backstairs to every house 
which is worth anything; as there are dark corners in the 
annals of every great family, almost incredible meannesses 
in the history of every nation—Leesgrove Hall was what 
the land agents describe as “a noble pile,” none the less 
stolidly imposing because Claudia Waring chose to turn 
up her nose at it this fine morning in mid-October. 

There was no one in sight in the grounds, apart from a 
gardener or so, and after a moment or so of resentful star¬ 
ing she turned aside and back into the woods, making her 
way through them as slowly as possible, feeling disgusted, 
as anyone does, who, setting out to put another person in 
his or her place, finds that the other person refuses to 
materialise, spoiling the whole game like a lost queen from 
a chess-board. 

Pickles was behaving outrageously, as though the whole 
of woodland belonged to him, and she actually shooed him 


80 


REPUTATION 


on, in the sort of mood when she would have been glad 
of any sort of excitement, even an encounter with Knowles. 
But nothing happened, and she went home convinced that 
nothing ever could or would happen again, arriving so late 
for lunch that she did not even trouble to wash her hands 
or brush her hair, and in a thoroughly bad temper. 

Granny did not like cold meat and was very put out 
with Miles, who had not taken it kindly when she counter- 
ordered “that man Cross” port, told him to serve the 
eighteen-fifty port instead; for the Rector had a fine cellar 
of wine, and the old lady used to lie awake at night cal¬ 
culating the years she might expect to live, weighing them 
against it, parcelling out the number of bottles of really 
good port, the only wine she cared for. Being, as she was, 
on the lookout for something wrong, she at once pounced 
upon Claudia’s hands: leaning forward, holding her glasses 
to her nose, for she refused to wear spectacles; remarking 
that in her day young ladies did not put their feet on the 
table. 

Claudia said nothing, kept her chin in the air. For she 
knew Granny, the Puck-like malice which lay behind that 
sudden affection of prim innocence. But, of course, 
Gertrude had to cut in. 

“Why, Granny dear, no one has got their feet on the 
table! Are you looking at Claudia ? How funny you are, 
Granny! Why, it’s Claudia’s hands.” 

“Dear, dear! Claudia’s hands, do you say? I really 
must apologise to Claudia, but there seems to be something 
so like mud upon them that I’m afraid I took them for 
feet,” remarked the old lady, smiling sweetly as she started 
upon her rice pudding. So well pleased with herself that 
she even went so far as to praise it. 

“I must say, Marian, your cook does know how to make 
a plain rice pudding, if she knows nothing else.” 

After lunch Claudia went up to the girls’ special sanc¬ 
tum, poked up the fire, and sat with her knees into it, 
turning over her hands in her lap, looking at them. There 


REPUTATION 


81 


was a single smear of mnd over one knnckle, that was all, 
for she had those sort of hands which seem to keep clean 
through almost anything. Granny’s eyes were like gim¬ 
lets; she was like a sword in a thickly-padded sheath, a 
sheath like a cushion. 

Gertrude was seated very erect at the table, writing out 
lists of something or other, as she always was. Claudia 
sighed deeply, and she glanced up: 

‘‘Really, Claudia, you’re for ever sighing! What’s the 
matter now?” 

“Indigestion, I expect.” Not for worlds; not for any¬ 
thing in the world; not if Gertrude were the only other 
person left in it, would Claudia have confided in her. 

“You’d be all right if you had more to do. You ought 
to take more exercise, interest yourself in things.” 

“What, running after curates? Catch me—” she was 
going to say “playing the fool in that way,” but caught 
herself up; though after all . . . Oh, well, of course it 
wasn’t curates; and going out to meet anyone in battle 
was an altogether different matter to running after them, 
she thought, stooping to pull the burrs off Pickles’ ears. 

Gertrude was silent for a moment; then, remembering 
that she was the model daughter and sister—fit prepara¬ 
tion for the model wife—glanced up, smiling brightly. 

“Come now, supposing you help me for a change.” 

“What are you doing?” enquired Claudia with the ut¬ 
most languor. 

“Making out the list of the girls in my branch of the 
G. F. S. After that’s finished I’m going to write a little 
personal invitation to each. You can’t think how it 
pleases them.” 

“How can you know? You’ve never seen them open 
them,” remarked Claudia odiously enough. Then added: 
“Let me tell you this, my dear G., if I were a-young- 
person-of-a-girl, meet for the Friendly Society, which thank 
goodness I’m not, you’d send me straight to the dogs— 
the darnation bow-wows.” 


82 


REPUTATION 


She flung out of her chair at this and went up to her 
own room, where she found Francie turning out the con¬ 
tents of her drawers in a melancholy fashion. 

“Mother says I must make a list of what I’ve got, or 
we’ll never know what I’ve got to get,” she said in her 
helpless way. “And somehow it does seem so stupid to be 
buying summer things in winter.” 

“U-u-m!” 

“Claudia, do you realise I’m going on the twenty-first? 
That as likely enough we’ll never see each other again?” 
—Francie flung out in a tragic fashion, her arms piled 
with underclothes, her tears falling upon them. 

“Oh, that’s rot! Anyhow, the twenty-first—and after 
all it’s not this twenty-first—is miles away yet. ... I say, 
Francie, let’s light a fire here and pull up our chairs and 
have a nice comfortable talk. I’ll help you darn your 
stockings. ’ ’ 

“Claudia, we mustn’t! Why, there’s a fire in our den; 
there’ll be an awful fuss if we light another here. Clara 
will be sure to tell Mama.” 

“Let her tell. You look perished.” 

The fire was lit and they sat by it, Claudia glowering 
and unusually silent, while her sister talked. At close 
upon four o ’clock, however, when it was already beginning 
to get dark, she declared that she must have a breath of 
fresh air, and putting on her out-door clothes again walked 
half-way to Overton and back. 

She went to the woods again next day and the day after, 
but saw nothing of Lord Blagden, though she ran into 
Knowles, who gave her a peculiarly insolent glance; though 
he said nothing, despite the fact that Pickles was running 
a stream of wild yaps along the hollow of the woodland. 


CHAPTER VII 


Next day was Sunday, and to Claudia’s amazement Lord 
Blagden was at church, in the immense family pew, square 
and roomy as it had always been, but shorn of its high 
panelled enclosure; so that, although he did not actually 
mix with the herd, he was open to their gaze, unable to 
slumber in peace as his forefathers had done. 

Claudia’s first feeling was one of flat disappointment. 
It seemed incredible that she could ever have worked her¬ 
self up, as she undoubtedly had done, over this heavily 
built, middle-aged man in a pepper-and-salt, claw- 
hammered coat—an extremely well-made coat, but, for all 
that, cutting its wearer completely away from the glamour 
of the woodland. 

He was a little bald, too; very little indeed for a man 
of his age, but then, there had been that illusion of com¬ 
plete agelessness. 

She watched him hardly, critically, determined to crit¬ 
icise, pick him to pieces. He did not seem to know how 
to find or keep his place, stood when other people kneeled, 
then dropped to his knees, glancing round shamefacedly 
like a schoolboy. 

After all, men never did really grow up; they got old, 
but they did not grow up. There was her own father, for 
instance. Piers played at being grown up; but once he 
was too old to play he would remain, for the rest of his 
life, as ridiculously childish as the rest of them. 

Oh, well; the very idea of troubling oneself about a man, 
any man, young or old! She was thinking this, disdain¬ 
fully enough, when Blagden, in one of his uneasy turn¬ 
ings, caught sight of her—ridiculously prim in her best 
hat with its high upstanding bows, her innumerable but- 

83 


84 


REPUTATION 


tons, bustle and whalebone—and smiled with such open 
delight that she was disarmed, and smiled back, with her 
heart beating fast from some odd sort of excitement, not 
exactly pleasure, right up in her throat; completely for¬ 
getful of the fact that only a moment or so before he had 
seemed hopelessly middle-aged. 

Some instinct of flight made her push her way down 
the aisle the first moment the service was over—regardless 
of the people who lingered at the end of their pews, with 
the discreet beginnings of smiles and nods—and hurry 
away through the churchyard. 

4 ‘Did you see that Lord Blagden was in church?” en¬ 
quired the Rector at luncheon. “I just caught him at the 
gate and had a few words with him. . . . The undercut? 
Of course, Mother, if you prefer it.” 

He turned the large joint and sliced the undercut for 
old Mrs. Waring, whose eyes were snapping with interest, 
for she looked forward to her midday Sunday meal, and 
then turned it back again to carve for the family. 

“I must say I was very gratified to see him there. It 
sets a good example to the people—very right and proper. 
He wanted to know if I would not go and have a bit of 
dinner with him on Tuesday, and I said I’d be delighted. 
Of course, one doesn’t care to go back on one’s principles, 
and undoubtedly there has been—” He broke off at a 
warning glance from his wife—a glance that said “Re¬ 
member the girls and Miss Irwin”—and added: “Oh, 
well, well, it seemed a chance for getting in a few words— 
a few words in season.” He looked round at them all 
smiling genially: remarked that he supposed that he could 
have his own dinner now that the ravens were fed, every¬ 
one else carved for, and turned the joint, once again, to 
the undercut side. 

“He half suggested that it might amuse some of the 
young people to come too; that he supposed he must not 
venture to ask you, as his wife was not at home; but that 


REPUTATION 85 

young ladies were not so exacting, might be persuaded to 
overlook the failings of a bachelor establishment.’’ 

“They could not go without me,” said Mrs. Waring, 
“and I suppose, considering the stand we’ve made—” she 
added reluctantly. 

“Of course, of course—out of the question. I gave him 
to understand that. A man’s party is a different affair 
altogether,” said the Hector, with the smiling decision 
which he assumed upon any question of right or wrong. 

Granny’s eyes were fixed on Claudia, who half believed 
that she read her thoughts. “Oh, and I could have worn 
my new pink dress! ’ ’ 

A tart made of bottled gooseberries with cream and 
custard followed the roast beef and Yorkshire pudding. 
There was a double trickle of languid talk between Miss 
Irwin and Gertrude, who were discussing the hymns, and 
the two youngest girls, who could not agree over the direc¬ 
tion of their afternoon walk. 

Into the midst of this Granny pounced, silencing all four, 
though it had nothing whatever to do with them. But it 
was always this way with Granny, any sudden remark 
producing a widespread sense of paralysis; so that when 
she did drop to silence no one could think of anything to 
say. 

“I’m convinced that Claudia oughtn’t to have tart. 
Of course, it’s got nothing to do with me, and I don’t sup¬ 
pose anyone will listen to me; but considering that she’s 
got very little, apart from her complexion, such as it is, to 
depend on in the matter of looks, and pastry is, or was 
considered in my young days, the worst possible thing for 
indigestion-” 

She paused, in a way she had, and Claudia, who was off 
her guard—thinking of the pink dress—“Why, I’ve only 
had the chance to wear it once!”—fell into the trap and 
denied the imputation, for she had a healthy appetite for 
tart. 



86 


REPUTATION 


“Why, I’ve never had indigestion in my life. ,> 

“Oh, Claudia, and only the other day you said-” 

Gertrude broke in horror, to be snapped off by Granny— 
who liked to manage her own skirmishes, took no notice 
whatever of what anyone else said—her small bright eyes 
full of delighted malice: 

“If it’s not indigestion, it’s tight lacing; no girl ever 
had a colour like that for nothing.’’ 

“She was crimson in church,” put in Beatrice, and 
added shrilly: “Why, Claudia, you’re as red as anything 
now, really and truly you are! ’ ’ 

“She simply flew out of church,” said Ella. 

“Yes, and do you know you left your umbrella behind? 
I couldn’t catch you and had to carry it all the way home 
as well as my own. I felt so silly; everyone stared at me. ’ ’ 

“You’d look silly, anyhow,” retorted Claudia, with her 
face on fire; thankful to see that Granny, having shot her 
bolt, was concentrating her smiling attention, for the time 
being, upon the extraction of the lumpiest cream from out 
the silver cream jug which Miles was handing to her. 

At the dining-room door the two younger girls caught 
at Claudia’s arm: “Look here, are you waxy with us? 
But you were red you know, really and truly you were.” 

“And you will read to us, won’t you? Look here, Clau¬ 
dia, don’t be a pig. Sunday’s the only day, and there’s 
that darling Elaine.” 

Claudia had been reading “The Idylls of the King” to 
her younger sisters every Sunday afternoon before they 
went for their walk, and loved it—the sweeping verse, the 
colour, the romance, the visions of what might be before 
her in her own life; though, above all else, she loved the 
way in which the two girls hung upon her, the momentary 
shifting of their interest away from Miss Irwin, with her 
sentiment, her silky manners, her undeniable good looks, 
her long trains and elaborately-dressed head of hair; so 
different to any of the governesses there had ever been 
before at the Rectory, dowdy and old-maidish; so different 


REPUTATION 


87 


and yet so curiously and consistently “the governess/’ the 
enemy of youth; and—•* * Fancy sucking up to a governess! ’ ’ 
That’s what Claudia said. 

But where was the good of reading “The Idylls” when 
all sentiment was rot, she thought; when everything in real 
life was so completely different? 

“No, I won’t read to you. You’re a contemptible little 
couple of toads, that’s what you are; siding with Granny 
against me, always sucking up to someone or other. Come 
along, Francie.” She slipped her arm through Francie’s, 
and they went up to their own sanctum where the younger 
girls were not allowed, and which, as Gertrude was going 
off to the children’s service, they would have to themselves. 

Claudia wanted Francie; for that moment she wanted 
her and wanted no one else; was appalled at the idea of 
her going away to Africa. There had been a queer sense 
of shock and loss when she had first seen Blagden in church 
that morning. He seemed so completely different to the 
excited dreams she had built up around him—the bad, bold 
man, the wild romantic adventurer—“thrilly” they would 
call him now. And yet, for all that, the one man in 
the world who had ever looked at her as though she were 
really rather wonderful; who had been at once humble and 
arrogant; who had seemed to understand her, that ridicu¬ 
lous and pathetic snare of youth, as if anyone ever did un¬ 
derstand anyone else; as if any of us would like it if they 
did. She was as little of a snob as most people, but is any¬ 
one ever completely free from that taint ? Miss Fair was 
the worst of the species, continually running down people 
in a manifestly higher position than herself; Miss Fail 
with her “That Lord Blagden or whatever he calls him¬ 
self!” But for all that the tale of his wild ways, his 
knowledge of women, his many conquests had combined 
with his title to add an unmistakable glamour. 

And now this middle-aged country squire, so decorously 
seated in his own pew at his own church! What an anti¬ 
climax ! Why, if he wasn’t wild he was not anything, was 


88 REPUTATION 

just like anyone else; what he himself had called “rumpty- 
foo.” 

Why even that kiss—and despite Claudia’s real astonish¬ 
ment, sense of insult, this idea was the worst of all—might 
have been nothing more than kindness, half paternal. 

She knew it wasn’t. Oh, she knew it, though she told 
herself it might have been with a man who looked—well, 
looked so set and proper. Anyhow, she could never be so 
silly as to “think things” again. 

She was fixed upon this point, her own complete disillu¬ 
sion, sitting upon the hearthrug leaning against Francie’s 
knee—while Francie stroked her hair and soothed her 
own soul, shrinking from those parched winds of Africa, 
with innumerable, meandering plans as to what they would 
do when Claudia came out to visit her, and all Francie’s 
dreams were pathetically enough hung round her own 
home, her own people—when the expression of Blagden’s 
face as he turned his roving eye and found her—and after 
all he had not behaved very well, too well—came back 
to Claudia: the brightening of the whole face, the flashing 
smile of pleasure, as young as—Oh well, as young as 
spring is every year that it comes; while with this was the 
memory of that sudden, excited leap of her own heart, 
sending the blood flaming up into her cheeks, catching the 
curious eyes of her two younger sisters. 

How could anyone know what anyone else thought about 
anything, she asked herself confusedly, when one did not 
really know oneself; with thought and feeling all muddled 
up together in the way they were—in the way they were 
with her—blowing hot and cold. 

How could anyone say: “I wouldn’t have done that if 
it had been me,” when one did not know what on earth 
one would do from one moment to another? 

“We were getting saucepans and things, because Frankie 
said they were so expensive out there; and I bought one 
dear little saucepan lined with enamel just on purpose, be¬ 
cause I thought: ‘When Claudia comes to stay with me 


REPUTATION 


89 


we can make toffee together! ’ Anyhow, it will only be for 
two years, and then I ’ll be back home again; and if Frankie 
doesn’t come we’ll have the same room, darling, just like 
old times; so we can talk together just as much as ever we 
like, about all the dear old things which always interested 
us. Though I expect he will come; he’s almost sure to, 
and then, of course, it will be different.” 

“Francie, do you love Frankie, really love him, I 
mean ? ’ ’ Claudia pulled herself away from Francie’s hand, 
threw back her loosened hair and stared up at her sister: 
intently, with wide open brown eyes, flushed cheeks. 

“Why, of course I love him; he’s my husband.” There 
was something shocked in Francie’s voice; she spoke like 
the married woman. “It would be too awful if one didn’t 
love one’s own husband.” 

“More than anyone else?” 

Frances hesitated for a moment or two, and then said: 
“Yes, of course more than anyone else,” adding very 
primly: “It’s only bad women who don’t love their own 
husbands.” 

“More than all of us—more than all of us put together?” 
persisted Claudia cruelly; then scrambling to her knees, 
flung her arms round Francie, hugging her close to her: 
“More than me, Francie, more than me? Really and 
truly more than me?” She felt as though she must force 
her sister to a denial; as though she must come first with 
someone or other. The desire was sheer pain to her. 

She felt Francie tremble and stiffen. “Yes, more than 
you. Don’t you see, C ? I must, I must! ” she cried. And 
then again, clinging to her, with the tears running down 
her face: “Don’t you see I must! But I love you 
awfully, awfully, awfully! I feel as though I loved you 
with my whole heart; but you see I can’t—you do see that, 
don’t you?—I can’t love you best. I mustn’t let myself.” 

Claudia drew back a little and stared at her rather 
coldly: “And yet you say there are things—with 
Frankie.” 


90 


REPUTATION 


“But there must be things; there always are things 
with everyone. That’s what Mama says: ‘There’s always 
something or other’; something one must make up one’s 
mind to try not to notice.” 

“I suppose there is,” said Claudia; and turning round 
again, sank to the floor, propping herself against her 
sister’s knees, staring into the flames; seeing there the 
plain picture of three diagonal lines, by no manner of 
means folds, across the back of Blagden’s neck, two short 
and one long one, just above the top of his immaculately 
shiny collar. 


CHAPTER VIII 


Next day was flat and dreary and bitterly cold. One 
of those days when one feels as though one were walled up 
in a peculiarly disagreeable self, all goose-flesh inside and 
black ice outside. As though nothing can ever again hap¬ 
pen which will, in the remotest fashion, please or interest 
one; while the younger one is the more fixed and hopeless 
in this belief. 

Directly after luncheon, Claudia started off to see a 
woman who was dying of cancer, or rather could not die, 
at one of the Leesgrove lodges; a lodge which lay off at 
right angles to the Long Wood and a good two and a half 
miles away from the Rectory. 

It was one of the curious contradictions of Claudia War¬ 
ing ’s character that she was at her very best with sick 
people; had not, despite her own abounding vitality, the 
slightest shrinking from them, from even the most sordid 
manifestations of their illness; did not care what she did 
for them; was domestic then as she could not be at any 
other time, when everything of that sort bored her. In 
addition to this, when once anyone was really ill, he, or 
she, lost that air of being slightly ridiculous which struck 
her so in connection with humanity in general; lending to 
her earlier work a sort of detachment and hard brilliancy, 
as though she were the critical spectator of a masquerade. 

And yet, from the very beginning, there was no one who 
better realised the meaning of the word pity. Once she 
was really touched it became a passion; there was nothing 
that she would not do, nothing that she herself would 
not suffer. And she did suffer, was wrung out by the 
sorrows of others; while their joys, their loves, left her, 
for the most part, peculiarly cold. 

91 


92 


REPUTATION 


Mrs. Hall was in agony, an agony so persistent, so long 
drawn out that it seemed fixed to a point in the glazed bril¬ 
liance of the wide-opened eyes. 

1 ‘ She can’t not keep ’em shut, even at nights, ’ ’ said Miss 
Finney, the sister who was staying with her, minding her 
to the best of her ability. ‘ ‘ Night and day she do lie 
there like that, starin’ in front o’ ’er, ’er ’ead and ’er poor 
body all a jerk with that there dreadful pain. There ain’t 
not no rest for ’er, no rest noways. And yet she don’t 
never complain; times she cries out sharp like, but she 
don’t never complain. It would seem more natural, more 
human like, if she did. But there it is. It beats creation, 
that’s what I says; an’ there ain’t no doin’ nothin’ for 
’er neither, though she can’t not abide ter be alone, and 
the house in such a muck as never was. If I could get on 
to ridding up things a bit I’d feel easier like; for there’s 
no sayin’ what she’d think o’ me, if she could get down 
them stairs an’ see it, the way it is now.” 

She herself was at the end of her strength, sapped with 
anxiety and watching, with that dry, bleached look which 
comes with continuous strain and nervous exhaustion; her 
own hands twitching as though in unconscious mockery 
of the sick woman. With the greatest difficulty, Claudia 
prevailed upon her to go and rest for an hour or so; taking 
her to her room, covering her up with the blankets and 
wadded quilt, then returning to Mrs. Hall’s bedside. 

She had been there before and she knew what to do. “I 
know what she likes, I feel it in my bones, ’ ’ she said. She 
stroked her hand, wiped the sweat from her forehead, and 
said hymns to her. In later years, when she realised more 
of the full horror of the disease, she was surprised at her 
own audacity; it all seemed so amazingly futile; but there 
it was in all its simplicity, and Mrs. Hall loved hymns. 

Claudia herself had been to church so regularly through¬ 
out her entire life—from the days when the hard edge of 
the pew cut into her bare calf—had at this time so reten¬ 
tive a memory for anything in the way of verse, that she 


93 


REPUTATION 

used, in later years, to boast laughingly that she knew 
every hymn in the Ancient and Modern hymn-book by 
heart. In any case, she knew them so well, knew so many, 
that she could go on and on, with her thoughts streaming 
off, first in one direction, then in another—not the running 
mice sort of thoughts, but the ones which are like slow- 
moving pennants of white clouds on a blue sky, just suffi¬ 
ciently wind swept to be kept moving. 

This preoccupation gave her voice a peculiarly smooth, 
soothing cadence, and after a while she became aware, as 
she sat there stroking the sick woman's hand, repeating 
line after line of first one hymn and then another, sweet, 
insipid, inane or lovely—and there were some which held 
their own throughout her life, held it even now against 
that queer mixture of contempt and adoration for such 
things as "The Idylls of the King"—that Mrs. Hall, who 
suffered tortures from insomnia, had dropped to sleep. 

It seemed that Miss Finney must be sleeping too: Clau¬ 
dia had heard the clock in the kitchen downstairs strike 
four some time ago. It struck half-past now, and then 
five. For a long time she went on with the hymns, 
scarcely knowing what she said, her voice so hoarse that 
it was barely audible. At last it gave out altogether, but 
still Mrs. Hall slept on, propped high upon her pillows, 
with her thick dark plaits hanging straight at either side 
of her face, the sweat glistening upon her forehead, while 
the hollows round either eye and in either cheek were so 
profound that the whole effect was that of an exaggerated 
study of death done out in black charcoal and greenish 
white chalk. 

Claudia went on stroking the thin hand mechanically, 
with her thoughts, more than that her actual self, or so it 
seemed, streaming away—up to London, out to dinner in 
her pink tulle frock; out hunting, galloping, galloping, 
riding over wide open country, with a low ridged distance, 
the wind in her face—and it was as real as that; coming 
back to pray in her desperate fashion that this tortured 


94 


REPUTATION 


wretch might go on sleeping, slip off in her sleep; for death 
seems so easy to you when you are only eighteen: then 
biting her lip, staring at the fire in the tiny cottage grate, 
her whole mind quite suddenly intent upon that alone, 
wondering if she could dare to replenish it, how long it 
could last—and next moment off again; thoughts like 
hounds, a strange mixed pack, streaming away and away, 
topping the ridge one by one and being lost to sight; with 
odd occasional lines of the hymns which she had been re¬ 
peating looped in and out among them—“There is a green 
hill far away”—“Shadows of the evening steal across the 
sky”—“It is not night if Thou art near—” the strangest 
medley of thought. 

Just as it struck six, Miss Finney opened the door and 
she jerked herself upright, out of a half doze, seeing the 
angular figure with the candle in its hand, the white¬ 
washed wall of the little landing, like a photograph, de¬ 
tached and fixed. Sliding from her chair and crossing 
the room, she caught at her arm. 

“S-s-sh, she’s asleep,” she whispered. 

“I’m afeared I’ve been a main long time, miss. I’m 
sure I don’t know what to say—I dropped asleep, I didn’t 
not know.” The woman was half dazed, her grey hair all 
on end. 

“It doesn’t matter, she’s asleep; nothing matters, if 
only she can go on sleeping.” Claudia pinched her arm, 
beaming at her from her own sleep-laden eyes, feeling as 
though she could have embraced her. “S-s-sh—don’t 
come down. I’ll let myself out quietly.” 

She was full of a strange chastened sense of exhilara¬ 
tion as she turned and moved down the crooked little stair¬ 
way. If she never did anything else in life worth doing 
she had, at least, done this: brought to a pause, for a time 
anyhow, that torture of the rack. She felt cold, stiff, and 
somehow—well, cleaned out, as if she had purified herself; 
could never again think dreadful things, feel dreadful 


REPUTATION 95 

things; as if, really and truly, nothing could ever again 
very greatly matter. 

Hall himself, one of the Leesgrove under-keepers, 
opened the door as she took the last step into the kitchen, 
bringing with him a scent of the clean, cold outside air, 
of pine boughs and beech mast. A fine sprinkling of snow 
lay across the leather-covered shoulders of his rough frieze 
coat, his lean whiskered face was reddened by the wind, 
drawn and stubborn. 

“E-e-h, Miss Claudia.’’ 

‘‘She’s asleep,” said Claudia eagerly, still whispering, 
still under the influence of that silent room. “She’s hav¬ 
ing a beautiful sleep.” 

“E-e-h, now”; the man spoke slowly and heavily, as 
though with complete indifference; taking his coat and 
hanging it up behind the door; moving his bowed shoulders 
as though to rid them of some intolerable burden. “E-e-h, 
but it’s a main cold night; come on to snow a while back.” 

“Don’t you realise she’s sleeping, that she has not slept 
for nights and nights—sleeping like a child, ’ ’ said Claudia. 
Then, as he picked up the hook to gather the dying fire, 
she touched his arm, fussily important. “Do be careful 
not to wake her. One hears every sound up there, you 
know. ’ ’ 

Hall did not answer, and she drew back, picked up her 
own coat from the back of a chair and pulled it on. “Oh, 
what’s the good? People like this don’t really care, don’t 
really feel things; not in the way we do,” she thought con¬ 
temptuously. 

“It’s a main bad night. Would I get a lantern an’ see 
yer ’ome, Miss Claudia?” 

“No, no. I’ll be all right.” She was wildly impatient 
with the man for his slow stolidity, seeming indifference. 
It was no business of hers; but, for all that, it was shame¬ 
ful that a man should care so little. She determined to 
say nothing, then broke out almost before she knew what 


96 


REPUTATION 


she was saying. “You can’t know how she suffers. Miss 
Finney says she’s had an awful day—that she’s not slept 
for nights.” 

“Aye, that’s a fact.” 

Claudia was silent for a moment, taking hold upon her¬ 
self. She had felt like a saint as she came down those 
stairs. Now she did not—nothing of the sort—that was 
the fact of the matter. 

“I must be going. Tell Miss Finney I’ll come back to¬ 
morrow, I was afraid to speak up there,” she said stiffly; 
then added, with a sudden realisation of the desolate air 
of the man, aimlessly raking at the blackened wood, the 
drawn look around the long thin-lipped mouth: “You’d 
better put some light wood on that fire or you’ll never get 
your tea.” 

“Aye, well, it’s alius that gait now.” He stooped to a 
box of kindling, moving heavily as though he himself were 
made of wood, indifferently jointed, and threw on a hand¬ 
ful of chips, swinging round the kettle upon its hook: 
“No tea ready fur a chap, no nothing; an’ arter all these 
years an’ all.” 

It seemed as though he were thinking of himself alone. 
Claudia buttoning up the collar of her long coat, draw¬ 
ing on her woollen gloves, smarting with impatience, had 
the thought: “These men, these men!” when Hall 
straightened his back and flung round, staring at her with 
an odd blankness; not rudely, but like a man faced by 
some almost incredible stupidity. 

“You asks me if I know as ’ow she don’t not sleep o’ 
nights?” he said, speaking very slowly, every word de¬ 
tached. “You comes ’ere fur an hour or so o’ arternoons 
an’ asks me that?” He hesitated, raking at the ashes. 
“It’s main good o’ you ter come at all, Miss Claudia, and 
I don’t not deny it,” he added patiently; “but ter come 
’ere an’ ask that o’ me—me as ’as sat on the edge o’ that 
there bed”—he jerked his head in the direction of the 
room above them—“sat there ’olding my missus in my 


REPUTATION 


97 


arms like as if she were a baby, night in, night out, fur 
these weeks past—for she can’t not lie down, at the worst 
—with never more nor a wink o’ sleep fur fear o’ squeezin’ 
’er ’an ’urtin’ ’er; or not bein’ there, in a manner o’ 
speaking, ter say a word o’ comfort ter ’er when so be ’er 
should ’appen ter need it—fur if I sleeps I sleep heavy 
along o’ bein’ in the air all day, an’ all. You ter ask me 
if I knowed as ’ow she suffered, that’s what beats me!” 
he went on with an air of dulled amazement. “Me as is 
walking through hell more like than Leesgrove Woods all 
day with the thought of ’er, an’ the tears runnin’ down my 
face so that I can’t not rightly see what I be doin’, 
stooping over my ferrets and all. Aye, that’s what beats 
me. Me cornin’ back ’ere an’ findin’ it the gait it do be, 
when it were ’er pride and joy ter ’ave it tip-top, up ter the 
mark, agin my cornin’ back on a evenin’, runnin’ meself 
into a muck o’ sweat rather nor keep ’er waitin’. Cornin’ 
back ter this ’ere, as would break ’er ’eart if she knowed 
on it,” he added, with an ungainly gesture which seemed 
to pick out and hold up before Claudia’s eyes every dis¬ 
ordered detail in the tiny place, one of those fantastic 
octagonal lodges built for a supposedly picturesque effect 
in early Victorian days. “By gummy, it beats me; it 
beats creation, that’s what it do! ” 

“I’m sorry,” said Claudia, “oh, but I am sorry. I 
didn’t know-” 

“It ain’t not your fault, miss. I ain’t not blamin’ you, 
don’t you think it. All you gentry, you means well, an’ 
there’s no denyin’ it; but you don’t not know, there’s the 
mischief. ’Er Grace, she said ter me mother when dad 
died, and I mind it well: ‘It’s not riches as makes ’appi- 
ness, Mrs. ’All, and I’m sure it’s wonderful the way as 
’ow you manages,’ she says, says she. I mind it as well 
as though it was yesterday, and the way my mother carried 
on when she was gone, with seven children, and three-and- 
sixpence a week from the parish. But it wasn’t not 
’er Grace’s fault. It ain’t not nobody’s fault; it’s bein’ 



98 


REPUTATION 


gentry as does it, and so I says ter the chaps when they 
starts on talkin’ wild. Gentry don’t not know; an’ ’ow 
should they know, wid their servants and their sick nurses 
an’ all?” 

He sat down at the table, hunched forward with his 
shoulders rounded; picked up first one, then another of 
the dirty crocks, knives and forks which still lay there 
from what looked like two meals, and stared at them 
dolorously. 

“It ain’t not your fault, and it ain’t not no good settin’ 
out ter explain, for it’s out of reason fur yer to under¬ 
stand,” he went on wearily. “But it seems ter me as it’s 
the big things along o’ the little things as makes it all 
contrarywise with us poor folk to what it do be with the 
gentry. No ringin’ o’ bells ter ’ave the victuals brought 
all ready set on a tray, nor yet ter ’ave the mucky slops 
taken away, nor fur ’ot water neither. My wife she did 
used ter be in service as housemaid, and she told me the 
gait as ’ow it was. E-e-h, well, it ain’t not that way with 
us, an’ there ain’t not no manner o’ use in expectin’ ’as 
’ow the poor folk an’ the gentry ’ull understand each 
other—no more than that a man an ’ woman ’ull ever under¬ 
stand each other, not rightly so to speak, howsumever fond 
they do be,” he added, and fell into a long silence, shak¬ 
ing his head from side to side. 

“But there do be one thing as I knows,” he broke out 
suddenly, looking up at Claudia with fierce, haggard eyes, 
“an’ that’s as ’ow I wouldn’t let a dog suffer the gait as 
’ow she do suffer. An’ the doctor givin’ ’er stuff all along 
ter keep ’er alive. Where’s the reason o’ that now?” he 
went on hopelessly. “Where’s the sense or reason o’ 
that, when by the will o’ God she’d be outer it all? The 
Lord knows as there weren’t never no man as sets more 
store by his wife nor I do; how shouldn’t I, with ’er lying 
in my arms a’ night since the day I married ’er, an’ 
never not one night apart like the gentry, never one cross 
word a’tween us.—Aye, it’s ill work when a man gets ter 


REPUTATION 


99 


prayin’ as the creature as ’ee loves best in the world, ’is 
own wife, should be took. But fur all that I wouldn’t not 
keep a dog alive to suffer the way she do suffer. 

“Talk o’ agony an’ bloody sweat! Talk o’ agony an’ 
bloody sweat! An’ them’s the words that do come to 

me-” he went on in his slow voice, as though speech 

were being painfully ground out of him by some kind of 
heavy and primitive machinery of wood, swollen and creak¬ 
ing. There was the picture of a chaff-cutter, the heavy 
pole, the slow, dull-eyed horse, moving round and round 
in a circle, clear in Claudia’s mind as he spoke; along 
with this the picture of the room above, the tortured face 
turning to and fro on the pillow as she had seen it when 
she first came that evening; and superimposed upon it all 
the disordered kitchen, with the light leaping flames of 
kindling, no whit plainer than the rest. 

“Keepin’ ’er alive when by the will o’ God she’d be 
clean out o’ it, an’ at peace. Where’s the right o’ that? 
Tell me that now; where’s the right or reason o’ that?” 
muttered Hall, without raising his eyes as though weighed 
down by some intolerable weight. 

“Come to that,” he went on, “if you was to ask me, or 
if the Reverend ’isself were to ask me, I’d say as there 
weren’t no God; no God as a chap ’ud ’ave for a doctor, 
leastways; nor fur a keeper neither—ter think o’ me lettin’ 
one o’ my dogs, nor one o’ them there ferrets, nor a 
rabbit caught in a snare, go through all as she do be 
goin’ through—why, the police ’ud be down on me, that’s 
what they’d be!—No, nor ’untsman neither; this ’ere God 
as they lets on as is all love an’ kindness. Why, at 
nights I do be thinkin’ in my own way, supposin’ Maister 
Willis up at the kennels was to let one o’ ’is ’orses as ’as 
been spiked through the guts in a fence lie sufferin’ as 
she do be sufferin’, what ’ud folks be say in’ o’ ’im, I’d like 
to know?” he enquired dully; then cried out with sudden 
fierce vehemence: “By God—I says by God, and by 
God, says I—cause why? I don’t not know what ter say, 



100 REPUTATION 

who to be lookin 9 to; but what’s God about if so be there 
is one?” 

“I suppose He knows best,” said Claudia, not knowing 
what on earth to say; her whole soul crying out against 
it all; hating herself for speaking like the parson’s 
daughter, having no more to her than that, the mere 
habit of it all. 

But Hall only shook his head. “It’s not what He 
knows I’m questioning,” he said, “it’s the way as ’ow He 
acts. An’ that’s the gait as ’ow I judges folk.” 

There was the sound of a sharp cry, followed by a long- 
drawn wail, from the room above; the hurrying of foot¬ 
steps to and fro. 

Hall rose from the table, and, crossing to the mantel¬ 
shelf, took down a tea-caddy and tea-pot; measured out a 
spoonful very carefully and poked a fresh splinter of 
wood under the singing kettle. 

“She’ll be wantin’ a cup of tea,” he said stolidly; and 
then stood watching the fire, his deep-set eyes haggard 
beneath the shaggy eyebrows, his long unshaven upper 
lip drawn and twisted, not even looking up as Claudia 
raised the latch and slipped out of the cottage. 


CHAPTER IX 


The outside world was like an immense hollow cave of 
darkness. Claudia could not see the path or gate; there 
was no patching of trees against the sky; no stars, no moon. 

It seemed impossible to believe that any tangible world 
was existent beyond the lodge. The ground beneath her 
feet ended where she stood, or that ’s what it seemed like; 
if she took one step forward she would be over the edge of 
it all, falling through space. 

In the lodge behind her was agony and love, and in¬ 
finitude of human emotion, mysteries of which she knew 
nothing whatever. Here in the void of the outside world 
was one square of light thrown from the kitchen window, 
nothing more, for the bedroom was at the back, while even 
this was veiled by the blind. In any case she, herself, was 
outside, as she was outside everything, like a blue-bottle 
fly blundering against the glass which shut her away from 
other people, people entirely engrossed in one another. 
She felt so small that it seemed as though she might 
rattle. She clasped her arms round herself and squeezed 
herself together miserably; in all her life she had never 
felt so cold, so desolate. 

Why, she knew nothing, nothing whatever. Was Hall 
right? Was it because she belonged to the gentry; was 
padded round like the Chinese teapot in a lidded basket, 
which an Admiral Waring, her great-uncle, had once 
brought home with him? Was that what she was going to 
be all her life ? She asked herself this, and yet all the while 
she knew that there was no need for it. For she did feel 
things, did feel them, through and through her. 

The old Duke had been right when he said that she had 
originality; she had imagination also—or do the two always 

101 


102 


REPUTATION 


go together? It was her imagination which made her so 
awkward to live with, helped her to be at her very best 
in the face of anything unusual; gave her, as crowning gift, 
or recompense for her many stupidities, the faculty to put 
herself in the place of another; so that now she realised 
acutely all that illness must mean in a place like the 
lodge with no exit save through the kitchen, no inside 
conveniences, no water laid on; where every sound was as 
distinct as though the whole life of the place were lived 
in one room; the added misery all this brought to the 
continual sickness; the innumerable and ignoble calls of 
the body; the everlasting washing up and clearing away. 

Miss Finney’s one idea had been to go and tidy up the 
kitchen instead of resting. “I never seed anything more 
slummikin! But there’s been no gettin’ at it, no leavin’ 
’er with that there sickness and all.”—Oh, but there were 
innumerable details. The long nights in that tiny bed¬ 
room, with all their horrible monotony, stretched out to 
an eternity in Claudia Waring’s mind: the tortured 
woman, all skin and bone like an unfledged bird, in her 
husband’s arms; the black and greenish white of the face, 
with the skin stretched tight as parchment, glistening with 
sweat; the constant twitching movements, the broken cries 
and moans; the drawn, wry, weather-beaten face of the 
man, drunken with sleep, bent above her; the dead cold 
which would pinch up the little house should both he and 
his sister-in-law chance to sleep at the same time; the 
battling with sticks and paper in the mean grate, the 
smoky chimney. 

She saw it all. She saw the different coloured scraps in 
the patchwork quilt. There had been a lot of plain drab 
twill cloth pieces—why had they put those in? To eke 
it out, she supposed. And pink print with a tiny crimson 
fleck, and Turkey red; and pale green with a rosebud 
and black specks. Mrs. Hall had been working at it be¬ 
fore she was so acutely ill, and Claudia herself had brought 
her scraps, so that there were clippings from their own 


REPUTATION 


103 


frocks among them. She saw the frocks and remembered 
how she and her sisters looked in them; what they had 
done while they were wearing them; what people had 
said. Life was like that: other people’s scraps mixed up 
with one’s own, gay and drab; all fastened together and 
made the best of, with an infinite waste of time, minutes 
like stitches. 

She pressed the fingers of both hands in her woollen 
gloves tight into her arms, so that the pressure of them 
hurt her, even through her thick sleeve; repeating her own 
words with the fiercest self-contempt. “You can’t know 
how she suffers”—“She’s not slept for nights.” 

What a fool she had been, what a fool! Never, never 
again would she attempt to dictate to anyone. 

She moved a step or two down the path, turned, as 
she thought, to the gate, and hesitated, sniffing. There was 
a disgusting, acrid smell in the air. For a moment she 
was puzzled, and then, recognising the reek of Hall’s 
ferrets, realised that she had turned too sharply, and, 
stumbling over a low box hedge, cut her way across a 
flower-bed, found the right path and at last the gate. 

U-u-gh! What a beastly world it was! 

It seemed a trifle lighter in the road, or was it that 
she was getting used to it? She turned out of the drive 
gate and along the road which led into the cross road to 
Leesden, the icy wind in her face. The road rang beneath 
her feet. It was like iron. She herself was like a parched 
pea rattling in a black iron pot. 

She walked a full half mile along the empty road and 
saw and heard nothing. Even the cattle would be in 
sheds, the sheep sheltering huddled together at the shady 
side of the hurdles interwoven with straw. 

There was the sound of a cry, it might have been nothing 
more than a curlew; but Claudia thought to herself, with 
a shudder, feeling as though cold water were being trickled 
down her spine, “Perhaps Mrs. Hall is dead. Perhaps it’s 
her ghost.” 


104 


REPUTATION 


Just after this two points of light pierced the darkness 
ahead of her; materialised into the widely separated 
lamps of a dog-cart, blinding her with a flood of light. 

She stood aside and it passed. There were two men in 
it, one in the front and one at the back, or so it seemed, 
indistinguishable baulks of something just a little more 
solid than the darkness. 

The horse shied as it passed her, with a scrambling rattle 
of hoofs, for the ground was getting slippery, and then 
they were gone. 

But, no! With more sliding and rattling the horse was 
drawn up just behind her, and someone called her name 
—that important ‘‘Miss Waring!” 

Still a little dazed by the light, she turned and moved 
towards the trap, with the horse slipping and backing. 
There was no one in the back seat now. Then it must 
have been a groom and he was at the horse’s head. Her 
thoughts ran forward to this petty detail, away from the 
morass of fatigue and depression which had held her 
since she left Hall’s cottage. 

The man in the front seat leant forward, peering. As 
she came into the light of the near lamp and raised her 
face, he gave an exclamation of satisfaction. 

“Ah, it is you, then! I was sure I couldn’t be mistaken, 
knew that walk. But what a night for you to be out! 
Jump in and I’ll drive you home.” 

It was Lord Blagden; she realised this with a dull sense 
of surprise. Blagden, who seemed to have been completely 
wiped out of her life. 

“You’re not going my way,” she protested. 

“But that’s just what I intend doing—now. I can 
drop you and cut home by the road through the woods. 
Come along!” 

The groom came forward, lifting one lamp from its 
socket, so that Claudia could see the step, while Blagden 
leant towards her, holding out a fur-gloved hand. He was 
wearing a low top-hat which showed that he had been 


REPUTATION 


105 


hunting; his face was crimson with the cold, his blue eyes 
brilliant as he pulled her in and tucked the fur rug about 
her. 

He turned the horse; the groom jumped up at the back 
and they were off, with the sound of hoofs sharp as the 
stroke of a blacksmith’s hammer. 

“By Jove, it’s cold, freezing like anything! But thank 
goodness it held open for the best part of the day.” 

“Where was the meet?” Claudia spoke mechanically. 
It did not seem as though she were really there; her own 
words rung as apart from herself as the sound of the 
horse’s hoofs on the hard road. 

“Shepherd’s Barn; a good day too. I say, look here, 
you’re shivering. There’s another coat somewhere.” 

The man at the back thrust forward a coat and held it 
for her to put her arms in, while Blagden—after a sharp 
glance behind him, for he was irritated at the way in 
which the groom had handed it over without being asked, 
showing that he could hear every word that was said— 
helped to button up the rough frieze collar, smelling of 
peat and cigar smoke. 

He had a momentary impulse to turn the fellow out, let 
him walk home; but for once in his life he refrained from 
doing the first thing that came into his head. People 
jabbered so infernally in the country, and anyhow here she 
was, the jolly little thing, tucked in close to his side. He 
himself was surprised at the pleasure which this in itself 
gave to him. 

“What have you been doing with yourself? Why 
haven’t I seen you?” 

“Oh, I don’t know; I’ve been about.” She spoke 
vaguely, still in a dream. He realised this with a feeling 
of being somehow or other out of it, and it piqued him. 

“Look here, you’re not angry with me still? You’ve 
forgiven me?” In a moment he had forgotten about the 
groom at the back of them. “Come now, you must have 
done, or you wouldn’t have smiled at me as you did in 


106 


REPUTATION 


church; and I deserved it, for I went there on the off- 
chance of seeing you. But you bolted like a bunny. I 
got wedged up with a lot of old fogies, and then when 
I did get outside there wasn’t a sign of you.” 

Claudia did not answer. His words flowed like water 
over her—her outer self, still close-folded round the scene 
in Hall’s cottage—so that though she heard, she could not 
fix her mind to realise what he said, let alone answer him. 

* 4 Look here, you don’t mean to say you haven’t forgiven 
me yet?” 

“What for?” 

“Oh, you know—last time, at the Long Wood.” 

“Oh, that?” She turned her head and looked at him 
as coldly and detachedly as a woman of forty—or no, put 
it further back than that, thirty, say, the hardest of all 
ages—“I had forgotten about it.” 

She was speaking the truth, there was no doubt of that. 
Blagden was not used to such indifference, and something in 
him hardened. It was at this moment, perhaps, that he 
began to think of Claudia Waring as a woman, an op¬ 
ponent, instead of as a child, pretty and amusing, alto¬ 
gether delightful, in the way that he had done, despite that 
kiss. 

“If you have forgiven me, really forgiven me, we must 
have another walk together.” 

He leant towards her, his voice deepening; for he knew 
every trick of it—this disarming of women. The worst, 
or best, of it was that he was so human, so careless, so 
really kindly, that he would let slip the part, quite sud¬ 
denly ; sometimes out of sheer momentary weariness; some¬ 
times because his own feelings were touched, or he was 
lonely; spoiling it all by looking for the friend where the 
mistress was willing, so losing the fruit of all his pains. 
“To-morrow, eh, at the first gate of the Long Wood? No, 

no, not there—there’s that fellow-” He broke off as 

though he hated to mention the name; but his next words 
showed that his thoughts had been with Knowles, the one 



REPUTATION 


107 

person in the world whom he actively disliked. ‘‘By the 
way, where is that precious hound of yours?” 

“He makes a noise if he’s kept waiting.” Claudia’s 
voice was flat; the thought of the agony and love in the 
under-keeper’s cottage wrung her so that everything else 
seemed unreal, hard and cruel. 

“Where have you been? What’s the matter? Why, 
my dear child, what in heaven’s name is it?” cried Blag- 
den, genuinely distressed; for he had felt her shoulder 
shake against his own, caught the sound of a stifled sob, 
and, leaning forward, made sure of the tears upon her face. 

“For goodness’ sake tell me! It can’t be what I did— 
why, that’s over and done with! Surely, surely you’ve 
never-” 

“No, no, it’s all right.” With an effort Claudia caught 
back her self-control. “Only I’ve been up at the lodge, 

Hall’s lodge, you know-” Oh, but after all, Blagden 

was kind, kind and comfortable; she could tell him any¬ 
thing. The broad shoulder against her own was, in itself, 
a comfort. 

“What, Hall, the third keeper?” 

“Yes. His wife’s frightfully ill, and—Oh, I don’t 
know, but it seems dreadful, too cruel and wicked, to see 
people suffering like that.” 

“I didn’t know she was ill. Knowles ought to have 
told me—but there, Knowles! . . . Knowles—augh!” 

How he hated the very sight of the chap, the likeness to 
himself like an insolent blow on the face; hated speaking 
to him so that he was cut off from a very great deal which 
went on upon his own estate; hating him, and yet all the 
while strengthening his hand by this very avoidance of any 
discussion, so that the tenants and work-people got into 
the habit of looking upon the keeper’s word as absolute. 

“I ought to have known it. What is it?” 

“Cancer.” 

“Pheugh!—I say, that’s pretty awful, isn’t it? Why, 
I saw Hall yesterday and he didn’t say a word. But 




108 


REPUTATION 


then, why should he? They all think I don’t care a damn, 
I suppose. But what have you been doing there? It’s 
not the sort of thing for you to be mixed up in.” 

“I go up sometimes to sit with her. Her sister’s stay¬ 
ing there, but she has to get some rest sometimes,” 
said Claudia, hating herself for the sort of self-importance 
which crept into her voice, spoiling it all. 

“Poor devils! And I suppose Hall is out all day, done 
to a turn when he gets home at night? A pretty awful 
thing for a man to come back to, eh?” 

“He sits up with her all night, holding her in his arms; 
she can’t lie down. Oh, you needn’t laugh, you wouldn’t 
laugh if-” 

“Good God, I wasn’t laughing! What sort of a beast 
do you take me for?” 

“You needn’t say ‘poor devils’ either!” cried Claudia 
rather wildly. Her tears were gone, but she felt dread¬ 
fully unhappy, and alone. Would no one ever understand 
how she felt, care for her as Hall cared for his wife?— 
there was this in it too, for she was egotistical to the core 
of her. “Anyhow, they’ve got something—more than 
most people have, more than I’ll ever have,” she added, 
with the complete pessimism of youth. “They’ve been 
happy together; though it is a beastly little hole-” 

“The West Lodge, my-” 

“Yes, a beastly little hole! I know it’s yours, but that’s 
what it is. If you were ill there you would know. But 
they love each other, and that’s more than most married 
people do, I can tell you that.” 

“You’re right there,” said Blagden, and there was a long 
silence before he added, rather awkwardly, as though he 
had some difficulty in finding the words he wanted: 
“Though I suppose people get used to each other, worry 
along somehow. Get to sort of count on each other.” 

“Oh, but that’s what it is, that’s what frightens me 
more than anything!” cried Claudia passionately. 

“What?” 



REPUTATION 


109 


“That sort of half life—just jogging on, when it ought to 
be everything, everything! The Halls are poor and all 
that, but there’s something about them—I’ve always 
wondered what it was with her; but I know now; and he 
has it too.” 

“Not much of a keeper, a dullish sort of chap, sticks to 
his duty and all that; but all the same-” 

“Perhaps it is because he is dull—I don’t know, oh, I 
don’t know. Generally I hate dull people, but—oh, he 
worships her.” 

“Someone will worship you, some day; don’t you worry 
your pretty head about that.” 

“They don’t!” Quite suddenly Claudia was her own 
shrewd self; or rather that particular self, coolly critical. 
“No one will ever worship me; I pick holes, and no one 
who does that is likely to be worshipped. Why, if I was 
frightfully, frightfully in love, if I had had my head upon 
his shoulder, I’d know if the lapel of his coat was cut 
right.” 

They both laughed at this, then drifted back into melan¬ 
choly; a half pleasant melancholy this time, anyhow, so 
far as Claudia was concerned; for her whole outlook was 
at this time like a brocade weaver’s plant, with the 
elaborately cut, elaborately patterned cards, the multi¬ 
coloured threads of other people’s lives narrowed down to 
the small set pattern of her own. 

“I suppose no one is ever altogether happy. Here are 
two people happy and one is going to die. It’s only un¬ 
happy people who live on and on and on; they’re like little 
trees, they get all warped and twisted but they don’t 
break.” 

She was pleased with this, more than pleased when 
Blagden said: “By Jove, that’s a clever idea; that’s 
just what it is! Of course, one thinks everything is going 
to be top-hole and then, somehow or other, it isn’t.” 

“The jealous gods—that’s why they ‘turn on all sides 
their shining eyes,’ not because they love us, but because 


110 


REPUTATION 


they want to make sure that there is no one on earth as 
happy as they are,” said Claudia; forgetful of the Halls in 
that pleasure which youth finds in commenting upon the 
abstract misery of the world at large. “Anyhow, I don’t 
suppose that anyone’s ever really happy. I know I’m not. 
Are you?” She shot the question at him point blank, with 
the greatest gravity. 

“Well, I don’t suppose I am,” said Blagden, who had 
never really given it a thought. Sometimes he felt hipped, 
and sometimes people behaved rottenly and went back 
on him; but “happiness,” and “unhappiness,” that was a 
different matter. He had always, somehow or other, as¬ 
sociated the word with “poets and fellows like that.” It 
came to him now, however, that he was in reality fright¬ 
fully unhappy; and he said so. “I dare say you won’t 
credit it, but I can tell you I have a pretty poor time of 
it sometimes.” 

He was not even thinking of his wife, but that was the 
way Claudia took it; and when he spoke of his loneliness, 
added that it was beastly at Leesgrove, stuck there all 
alone, she was fiercely indignant. His wife could not care 
for him or she would be here with him now. People said 
that they got on badly together, said that it was all his 
fault, but that was nonsense. She did not understand 
him; that was it. There were, at least, faults upon both 
sides—Claudia was sure of this, for there are always 
platitudes to fit every case apart from one’s own. Taken 
the right way, no one could be kinder, more unselfish, 
simpler. She was certain of that—at their second meeting, 
too. This thought ran along the old well-worn path of 
being “misunderstood” with Blagden’s next words, so 
really unselfish, showing that he was. 

“Oh, well, it’s no good crying over spilt milk, as far as 
I’m concerned, anyway. The thing, now, is to think what 
we can do for those poor things up at West Lodge. Do 
you think a second opinion? Or is there wine, or any¬ 
thing like that?” 


REPUTATION 


111 


They had returned to the Halls, Blagden the more sincere 
of the two, for he could not hear to hear of anyone in 
trouble; while Claudia—hating herself for it as she might, 
and did—was totally incapable of disassociating other 
peopled troubles from that one small pattern of her own 
life. And yet, such is the queer irony of fate, if she had 
not felt as she did, putting herself in the place of other 
people, she would not have been so impressed by Blagden’s 
kindness, so really wretched over his loneliness, so alto¬ 
gether and hopelessly partisan in everything she did or 
said or thought. In fact, so dreadfully, so rawly young. 
And it is contradictions like this, added to the way in 
which everything and everyone seems to change with time, 
with the aspect from which they are viewed, that makes it 
so impossible to schedule human action and emotion. 

We are not the same for two minutes together; other 
people are not the same, nothing is the same. 

Immediately after that kiss at the gate of the Long 
Wood, Claudia Waring could not have borne the thought 
of meeting Blagden a second time, for the plain reason that 
he was an altogether impudent and disgusting person. A 
little later on he had changed to a person who needed to be 
put in his place, shown that he could not behave as he 
liked. He was now—and she wondered how she could 
ever have so misunderstood him—a person to be pitied; 
while above all this—and most fatal of all—was the fact 
that he seemed the one person in the world who really 
understood her, as she understood him; this shoulder-to- 
shoulder feeling being solidified by what passed just be¬ 
fore they parted at the Rectory gate: “It strikes me 
from what you said the other day”—and here was the 
flattery of remembering what Claudia had said—“that we 
are both pretty well in the same box as regards being alone; 
so, look here now, why shouldn’t we be friends, help each 
other as best we can?” 

“I don’t know if-” She might have said “if we 

can or if you’ll spoil it all by behaving in the way you 



112 


REPUTATION 


did last time,” but was checked by the thought of how 
horrid it was to be so suspicious of anyone; how, in this 
case, indeed, it might almost amount to a suggestion. Any¬ 
how, she could not always be fussing, looking back, chew¬ 
ing things over; he understood her now, they were friends. 

“In the Quarry Wood, then,” he persisted, “what do 
you say to that? At three o'clock tor-morrow, eh? You 
know the place, at the side of the road to Little Norton, in 
the dip where the beech trees sweep their boughs down over 
the gravel pit. By Jove, I remember how I used to swing 
down by them when I was a boy! It seemed tremendous, 
somehow, the eyes of a leap! Dragging them round taut, 
and hanging on to them; then sort of launching out miles 
upon miles into space; pulling them down with one’s weight 
and dropping into that soft, sandy stuff at the bottom, not 
like coming to earth at all.” 

“Yes, yes—and the swish of the boughs as they righted 
themselves, like the sound of the sea on a sharp shingling 
beach! Oh, don’t I remember, don’t I?” cried Claudia, 
wild with excitement. “Oh, but do you mean to say you 
used to do that too—really, really ? Swing out like that ? ’ ’ 

“Rather! And there used to be vipers there.” 

“Yes, yes, there are still; only not now, in the spring¬ 
time, when the sun’s warm upon the gravel. Do you know 
what we used to do ? Now I wonder—I wonder—what fun 
if you did the same! ’ ’ 

“Catch them with forked sticks, I bet anything. Of 
course I did!” Blagden himself was clean back in his 
own youth. Oh, but that was what made elderly women 
so rumpty-foo; they were never really young. If they 
attempted anything of the sort they were kittenish, 
ridiculous. No wonder a man liked a girl, a pretty, jolly 
girl, when she was really so much more his own age. 

“Yes, yes, that’s it. Piers and I—he’s my brother. 
And there are all sorts of other things: tickling trout and 
running down hares on steep hillsides, with foxhound 
puppies and terriers; and things like-” 



REPUTATION 


113 


“Hunting water-rats?” 

“Oh, but you didn’t, you didn’t, not really!—What with, 
tell me what with?” It seemed as though everything 
hung upon that. 

“Why, of course, with short sticks with lumps of lead 
at the top. I remember what a deuce of a trouble we used 
to have making the stuff stick!” 

That was enough. It would have been useless to remind 
Claudia Waring now, having found her playmate, that a 
very great deal of water had flowed under the bridge since 
Blagden’s boyhood; that she herself had really and truly 
outgrown it all; for their common memories drew them 
together, wiped out the years between them as nothing else 
could have done.—And after all, what real wickedness 
could there be in a man who cared for all the things you 
had cared for when you were young—younger than 
eighteen ? 


CHAPTER X 


The frost still held next day. But it was warm in the 
sunshine under the golden lee of the gravel pits, warm 
enough to have seen a viper; they even made a pretence 
of looking for one, scraping together the remnants of their 
youth. “Though we don’t care, really care, as we used to 
do,” said Claudia—lying on her back on the warm gravel 
while Pickles dug for rabbits in the hem of deep red 
soil at the top of the quarry. 41 One outgrows everything; 
there’s only one thing that I’ve always wanted to do 
and never done, and I suppose that’s the reason why I 
still want it, oh, frightfully.” 

“What’s that?” 

“To hunt.” 

“Well, why not? I could lend you a horse, would love 
to lend you one—a little bay mare with a coat dark and 
shiny like your hair. Why not ? If that’s all you want— 
Good heavens! To think of wanting anything as much 
as that!” 

“Don’t you ever want anything like that, think it’s the 
only thing—at the time?” 

‘ ‘ Oh, I suppose I do, though one’s an idiot for doing it. 
I suppose that’s what makes . . . ” he hesitated a moment 
quoting his wife, and yet reluctant to mention her name, 
picking himself up with, “someone I know says I’ve never 
properly grown up. Though hunting—well, not your sort 
of hunting. ’ ’ He did not look at Claudia, though he would 
have liked to, would—if she had been a little older— 
daring her with that glance of his, impudent and charming; 
forcing the colour to her face with the thought of other 
sports, more vital than the riding after a fox—with a pack 

114 


REPUTATION 115 

too. Nothing was ever really much fun unless it were 
secret, stolen. 

“Why on earth shouldn’t you have a day out? I sup¬ 
pose you can ride, have some sort of a habit?” 

“Oh, yes, I can ride, though I’ve never ridden any¬ 
thing hut carriage horses and ponies; and sometimes one 
of the farmers has let me have a ride on a cob—or things 
like that. But never a real ride. And they f d never let 
me hunt with you, never, never, never! ’ ’ 

“Why on earth not?” 

“Well, you know, they think you awful.” Claudia 
laughed, looking him straight in the eyes. How ridiculous 
people were, with their nasty stuffy little minds, when here 
they were so comfortable and happy, so altogether in¬ 
nocently and well amused. 

“Well, if they won’t let you hunt, I can anyhow lend 
you a horse, and we can ride together. They couldn’t 
possibly object to that, whatever they think of me!” He 
was rather pleased at the thought of himself as wild and 
dangerous, a scandal to the countryside; like a French 
novel beneath the pillows of all these rumpty-foo people. 
“Though, after all, why should they know? We’ll go 
before breakfast, directly it’s light; over the edge of the 
Ridge beyond Long Norton, eh? It’s topping there.” 

“Directly, the very moment it’s light, and over the 
Ridge beyond Long Norton,” echoed Claudia. “Oh, 
lovely, lovely—heavenly!” Already she seemed to be 
sweeping forward with the fresh morning wind against her 
face. “There’s always an east wind up there, and I love 
an east wind! It’s like a sort of spring-cleaning through 
and through one. If only we go early enough we ’ll see the 
sunrise, ride straight into it,” she cried with a laugh of 
sheer excitement, bolt upright on the sand, her hands 
clasped round her knees, staring in front of her with shin¬ 
ing eyes. 

“It’s a bargain, then.” Lord Blagden, lolling by her 
side, his pipe in his mouth, put out his hand, and for just 


116 


REPUTATION 


one moment laid it upon hers, his eyes bright as a boy’s; 
not in the least dispirited by the prospect of an early 
morning start, ready for the east wind even—and there’s 
youth for you! There was not the slightest pressure on 
Claudia’s hand either, it was the merest touch of friend¬ 
ship. Of course she would ride with him. What harm 
could there be in that ? And what larks they would have! 
It would be a good thing to let everyone see that a girl 
could be friends, real friends with a man. 

The same idea, newer in those days than it is now—and 
no less completely mistaken, for all its freshness—came 
like a sudden inspiration to Claudia Waring. She had 
never even thought of it before, never so much as seen a 
man that she would have cared to be friends with; certainly 
no one who ever needed her friendship as this man did. 
Indeed, Blagden’s life was, as she saw it, a most piteously 
arid and uninhabited desert; for if a man’s own wife did 
not love him, what was there left ? She never even thought, 
in her ridiculous egotism, of other people being as willing 
to offer consolation, fill up the gaps, as she herself. 

“To-morrow morning, eh?” 

“No, not to-morrow.” She remembered that Francie 
and her mother were going to Cheltenham for a day’s 
shopping, that the whole house would be astir early; and 
anyhow, a day or so off—say the day after to-morrow or 
the day after that—seemed easier somehow or other. She 
could not have said why. 

But Blagden did not mean to let slip anything in the 
way of an advantage. “Well, we’ll settle it all when you 
come to tea with me to-morrow.” 

“But I’m not coming to tea with you.” 

“Then you don’t trust me. You said we were friends 
and you don’t even trust me enough to come to tea with 
me.” 

“I do trust you, you know I do; only-Oh, look, do 

look!” 

There was a squirrel on one of the drooping boughs 



REPUTATION 


117 


just above her head, almost within reach of her hand. It 
moved round it out of sight, then back again; crept nearer 
and nearer, overcome by curiosity, its bright eyes fixed 
upon them, its coat the precise colour of the crinkled leaves 
which still hung there in that sheltered spot. There was 
not a sound in the sun-steeped wood, among the grey 
trunks and sparse copper-coloured foliage, just the same 
admixture of colour as Blagden’s tweeds. How different 
he looked to the man in the claw-hammer, pepper-and-salt 
coat whom she had seen in church only ten days earlier. 
The gravel was a delicious colour, deep gold. Everything 
was delicious. 

* 1 Don’t spoil it all. Of course I can’t come to tea with 
you.” 

“Why not?” 

“It’s not done, to go to tea alone with a gentleman.— 
Oh, shocking!” Claudia turned her head and glanced at 
him, her lips pursed up, her eyes dancing. The trouble 
with her was that she never could look upon conventions 
as anything but ridiculous nonsense; all the same, she was 
quite determined upon this point—for the moment. She 
had met Lord Blagden by appointment, what she supposed 
they called an “ assignation ’ ’—such an absurd word, so un¬ 
fitting for anything in real life—and now she was going 
to ride with him, two things she had never thought of as 
possible, though everything looks different when one really 
comes to do it. But that going out to tea alone at Lees- 
grove Hall, that, of course, was quite out of the question. 

“You’re a ridiculous child!” Blagden laughed. It did 
not really matter one way or another, and after all it 
might be best to go slowly. He did not mean anything 
wrong, want to spoil their time together, and he could never 
be altogether sure of himself where a woman was concerned. 
“Well, look here, I’ll make a bargain with you—let this 
go on one condition, and one only,” he said, “that is that 
you ride with me the day after to-morrow—the Lord only 
knows what’s wrong with to-morrow, but I’ll give in to 


118 


REPUTATION 


you there. Come now, at half-past seven on Thursday. 
I’ll bring the horses and we’ll meet—where, eh?” 

“I don’t think I can come at all. I don’t think I ought 
to come. There’ll be a dreadful fuss if it’s found out.” 

“I wouldn’t have thought you were so easily frightened.” 

“I’m not frightened—not for anything that’s worth 
while.” Claudia spoke coldly, without looking at him, her 
chin in the air. She was dying to go out riding; would, 
in general, have taken any sort of risk for any sort of a 
ride, and it was certainly no twinge of conscience which 
kept her back now; while Blagden himself thrilled her. 
The reason for her sudden stiffness was subtle, yet simple, 
purely natural. She was possessed by a sudden queer, 
secret feeling of preciousness, like a walled city or closed 
port; a delight in folding herself together; “keeping her¬ 
self to herself” as an uneducated person might have said; 
an instinctive knowledge that for every hair’s-breadth 
upon which she gave way to Blagden, she would have lost 
something, lost sevenfold. 

It passed in a moment—this feeling so old, so entirely 
feminine—was lost in the more wholesome thought of 
how it would feel to have what she called a “real horse” 
under her; of the windswept ledge in the early morning; 
of Blagden and herself galloping towards the sunrise as 
though to catch it; and with it all that it meant, the break¬ 
ing of a new, a wonderful day. For if she had not been 
something of a poet, entirely romantic for all her shrewd¬ 
ness, she would have been more discreet. 

“What is it? What’s the matter now?” Blagden’s 
tone was sulky, like that of an offended boy. 

“Nothing, nothing; of course I’ll come. And I’ll tell 
you where we’ll meet. You know there’s a large orchard 
at the top of our kitchen garden, and below that a long 
field running down to a lane—we always call it the 
Sandy Lane. There’s an old barn at the further side, 
and a rough bit of ground with furze and thistles at the 
back of it. Oh, but of course you know, the coppice at 


REPUTATION 119 

the top is the first place you draw after a meet at Little 
Norton/’ 

<l Yes, I know it. I’ve jumped into that lane scores 
upon scores of times.” 

“Well, we’ll meet there by the barn. But how will you 
manage with two horses and the side saddle and all? 
Someone’s sure to see you.” She was so ready with it all 
that Blagden wondered if she had done that sort of thing 
before, was less artless than she seemed. 

“I’ll bring my own second horseman.” 

“He’ll tell everyone.” Claudia drew back, looking at 
him doubtfully, her lips drawn tight. “They chatter of 
everything here.” 

“He won’t chatter. I’ll make it worth his while to 
keep his mouth shut. You can always do that.” 

“Shut their mouths, but not keep them shut.” In ways 
like this, in odd spurts, Claudia was the older of the two; 
at that moment, indeed, she might have been almost any 
age. Then she laughed, bounding back into youth, rising 
to her feet and shaking the gravelly, red-gold sand from 
her skirt. “Never mind. What does it matter ? Let them 
talk! We shall have had our ride together, and we shall 
have done nothing wrong. What could we do wrong, I’d 
like to know—burgle their stuffy old houses for them? 
One would never do anything if one was for ever think¬ 
ing what people were saying. Oh, but we will have fun, 
we will have fun!” She spoke feverishly, already assur¬ 
ing herself of the perfection, the absolute right of it all, 
as she was to do so many, many times within the next 
few weeks. 

Blagden also rose. “You’re not going?” he said. 

“I must go, it’s getting freezing. The sun’s gone; it 
will be dark in half an hour. Only look at the sky. 
Ugh, but it’s cold!” 

It was indeed cold; the glory of the short, late autumn 
day had passed; there was a feeling of penetrating damp¬ 
ness in the air, and a mist swam among the trees at the 


120 


REPUTATION 

level of a tall man’s height. Above that the sky glowed 
in a sullen, purplish red glow behind the dark trunks, the 
almost bare boughs. 

They parted at the gate of the wood. The melancholy 
of the evening touched Claudia; she was quickened, timid, 
shy, and yet somehow or other at peace. If Blagden had 
taken her in his arms and kissed her at that moment, she 
would not have minded. It would have seemed, somehow 
or other, quite right, as though it had been done in church; 
though, of course, people did not kiss in church, unless it 
was upon the day they were married, and she could never 
marry Blagden because he had a wife already. Still that 
did not prevent them from being friends. She held to 
this pathetic formula, until quite suddenly, as they 
lingered over their good-byes at the western gate of the 
Quarry Wood—so seldom opened that the bottom of it 
was deep in leaves, the top covered over with a fine green 
moss like thin velvet—he held her hand to his lips and 
kissed it gently; upon which she found herself repeating 
fiercely and argumentatively to herself, as though some¬ 
one were contradicting her: 

4 ‘ I love him, I love him; I do love him! ’ ’ 

His hat was in his hand, and she thought how nice his 
hair looked, like the beech leaves touched with frost; 
then he was gone with a laughing reminder of the day 
after to-morrow; striding back through the wood; while 
she crossed a wide field, dipped down a hollow to a stream, 
where the mist trailed like a wet scarf across her face, and 
made her way up the opposite hill towards the road which 
led through the village and yet more woods to the Rectory; 
holding the hand which Blagden had kissed folded in the 
other tucked up under her fur cape to her heart, simply 
because that seemed the right sort of thing to do. 

She had wondered if she would wear that cape, which 
was really out of fashion—had been passed on to her by 
one of her aunts; but her ulster was so shabby, and, after 
all, he had approved: “I like that pussy thing of yours/’ 


REPUTATION 


121 


he had said; laughing when she protested that it was 
sable, which in her heart of hearts she knew it was not. 
He had liked her hat, too: * ‘ The same hat you were wear¬ 
ing the first day I saw you.” 

She had laughed at this, mocking him with words that 
sounded in her own ears utterly fantastic and untrue. 
1 ‘Why, you’ve only seen me once.” 

“What about yesterday?” 

“You couldn’t have seen me then; it was as dark as 
pitch.” 

“I could see the tears on your face, anyhow,” Blagden 
had said, with a real depth of tenderness in his voice, and 
added: “By Jove, if I ever hear of any fellow making 
you cry! It’s always men that women cry about.” 

“Not me,” said Claudia, “catch me crying about any 
man!” All the same, she thought how nice it was of him 
to be so concerned. That was before he roused that queer 
sort of antagonism in her by wanting her to do anything 
definite, like going to tea with him at Leesden Hall, which 
frightened her however much she might pretend to her¬ 
self to laugh at it; for there are certain steps like this in 
a woman’s life, which, somewhere down in herself, she 
knows to be irrevocable. 

Francie was tired out by her day’s shopping. When 
she and her mother got home from their expedition next 
evening it was Mrs. Waring who was excited over the 
purchases made, the difficulties of buying summer clothes 
in the first week of November. 

“Only one parasol that was worth looking at anywhere, 
and all the attendants staring at us as though they thought 
we were mad when we asked for muslins and straw hats. 
‘But you must understand that the season’s over for that 
sort of thing, madame,’ that’s what they said. So stupid 
and narrow-minded! I was quite sharp with one girl; 
nearly asked her if she had never heard of India, where 
they have their hottest weather at Christmas—or don’t 
they?—or our Colonial possessions, Australia and Africa, 


122 


REPUTATION 


and all that. Really, the lower classes seem incapable of 
grasping anything outside their own immediate surround¬ 
ings; it’s almost incredible with the world as it is, so full 
of varieties of climate and all that. They wanted us to 
have thin silks; but, of course, silks are no good for really 
hot countries; they split at once, as I told them.” 

Mrs. Waring’s round pink face glowed, and she was 
completely fresh after her long day. She had been glean¬ 
ing all possible information about the climate of East 
Africa, of every tropical or sub-tropical country. Mrs. 
Burgoyne, who lived at what she called The Chalet, and 
whose husband had been an admiral, had told her so much 
about Hong Kong—and really all those places were much 
the same—that she felt as though she had actually been 
there; felt the sun burn, instead of glow pleasantly as in 
England, the silks fray and rip upon her own smooth 
rounded person with the heat. 

“We had lunch at Seaman’s confectionary shop, really 
quite nice, though we only gave ourselves half an hour. 
It was market day and the town was crowded; we were 
both tired out by the time the train left.” 

She did not mean it; she was really no more tired than 
a bather in a gently exciting sea. It was Francie who 
was tired; white as milk, the edges of her pale blue eyes 
pink, with purple stains like bruises beneath them. 

“That girl’s going to faint,” said Granny suddenly; 
and Claudia, sitting next to Francie, turned and caught her 
just as she was falling sideways against her shoulder. 

“If you run her about the way you’re doing you’ll have 
her on your hands, summer clothes and toupee and all! ” 
Granny used the word “toupee” with bright-eyed malice; 
for she knew the differences between topee and toupee 
perfectly well, was a great deal cleverer than her daughter- 
in-law. 

“You speak as though we wanted to get rid of her, 
the darling child!” cried Mrs. Waring, fanning Francie 
with a table napkin. “The last thing on earth-” 



REPUTATION 


123 


“Fiddle-de-dee! All women want to get rid of their 
daughters in the same way as all men want to get rid of 
their sons.” 

“She’s over tired, that’s all,” said Mrs. Waring 
decisively, in an offended way, as though that were the 
end of it all. And perhaps she was right, as stupid people 
so often are—just so far as the length from the nose to 
the eye—for after a little brandy, most of which ran down 
the small open square of her white dinner dress, Francie 
opened her eyes and Nanny appearing on the scene, she 
and Claudia helped her up to bed and undressed her. 

“Trapsing off to Cheltenham and Africa and such like 
places! If ever there was a young lady as ought to have 
stayed at home quiet with her fancy work, it’s Miss 
Francie. But there, she’s made her own bed and must lie 
on it,” grumbled Nanny. 

All the same she fetched a hot-water bottle for Francie’s 
feet and made her thoroughly comfortable in her efficient 
way, much better than Claudia could have done. 

“I’ll come back at nine o’clock with some hot milk for 
you,” she said, and it sounded like a threat. “I’ll lay 
anything you’ve not eaten any dinner.” 

Directly she was out of the room, Francie began to 
cry in a weak sort of way, with the tears just flowing 
down her face. 

“I’m tired out already,” she said. “I don’t know what 
I shall be like by the time I get to Africa. If only you 
were coming, C—if only you were coming, I should have 
someone at least.” 

“You’ll have Frankie meeting you at Cape Town.” 

“Yes, I’ll have Frankie,” Francie’s voice was flat, “but 
then he’s a man.” 

“I suppose that’s what you married him for,” said 
Claudia. She did not mean to be brutal but she wanted to 
know things—what there was about Blagden that made her 
long to pet him as though he were a child, and yet gave her 
that queer sense of antagonism. What did one feel about 


124 REPUTATION 

men; did no one ever feel the same way for two minutes 
together ? 

“I don’t know,” said Francie, and the tears began to 
flow afresh. “I don’t know why I ever married anyone. 
But if a person says he loves you and everyone else thinks 
you’re a silly, it seems horrid to be nasty to him. Besides, 
I do love him, and it was nice being engaged. I liked 
that, but I didn’t feel like I do now.” 

“How?” 

“Oh, I don’t know—like a muslin frock that’s been 
dragged anyhow, all out of shape in the wash.” It was 
the first comparison showing any sort of imagination that 
Claudia had heard from Francie. 

Gertrude came in and told her that she must cheer up 
and not give way to her feelings; they were all tired at 
times, and yet they went on trying to do their duty. Mrs. 
Waring came in and kissed her. Nanny came in with the 
hot milk; and Clara the housemaid with a pill from 
Granny, who declared that the only thing in life which 
really mattered was the proper regulating of the internal 
arrangements: “Pray to God and keep your stomach in 
order, ’ ’ that was what Granny said; though with even more 
biblical coarseness. 

Francie followed everyone’s advice and did as she was 
told with despairing resignation. “Anyhow, you’ve got 
plenty of new clothes, almost like a sort of second trous¬ 
seau,” said Claudia, trying to cheer her; but Francie would 
not be cheered. 

“What’s the good of having new clothes when the very 
moment I get out there I’m sure to start having another 
horrid little baby?” 

“Don’t have one; refuse to have one. Surely there 
must be ways.” 

“There’s not anything once you’re married, but a lot of 
horridness,” said Francie. “Just you wait. You’ll see.” 

“Well, I won’t marry at all if it’s like that,” said 


REPUTATION 


125 


Claudia, and made up her mind that she would never meet 
Blagden again, even to go for a ride with him next day; 
though, of course, that had nothing whatever to do with 
marriage. 


CHAPTER XI 


Next morning everything seemed different. Claudia 
had gone to bed early because Francie had begged her not 
to leave her, with the consequence that she awoke long 
before dawn, full of life and a spirit of adventure. 
Francie was still asleep, and she was able to dress and 
creep out of the room without waking her. Not that it 
would have mattered if she had, for all Claudia’s risings 
were either very late or very early; and during the last 
week or so, more restless than ever, she had got into the 
habit of early walks. 

Twenty minutes more and she was at the barn, with 
the half-cut stack leaning crookedly against it, a thick 
growth of docks and nettles round its base, the odd frowsy 
smell of nettles and damp hay heavy on the morning air. 
She remembered how Burrows, the farmer, had been 
nervous about that particular stack, prodding it with an 
iron rod, fearing it was overheating. It was slightly 
blackened towards the centre now; Claudia noticed that, as 
she noticed everything that morning with exceptional 
clearness, and wondered that it had not caught fire. 

A rough-haired, wild-eyed chestnut colt was standing 
under the shelter of the stack, its breath like smoke in the 
cold air, one side plastered with mud and scraps of grass. 
It was still scarcely light—the east a pale sallow green 
just flushed with crimson. The hedge at the back of the 
barn above the lane was thick with deep crimson hips and 
scarlet haws, mingled with old-man ’s-beard, all tangled 
and frosted; there was a thin twitter of birds—sparrows 
round the stack and finches in the white thistle heads. 
Everything was soaking with damp. A weasel ran out 
from a hole in the barn wall and stood shivering, shaking 

126 


REPUTATION 


127 


first one tiny foot, then the other; its head raised, its cruel, 
sensitive nostrils twitching, then hurried off as though 
upon some express business of its own. 

The crimson flush in the east paled and cleared to a 
delicate pink veil spread out wide over something no more 
tangible than an unfathomable depth of light: the in¬ 
definite sky immediately above Claudia’s head turned to a 
pale blue, freshly washed and suffused with light from 
that same source, an endless widow’s cruse. There was a 
sound of cattle lowing; a dog barked at some distant farm; 
a robin tweeted shrilly, hopping from twig to twig in the 
hedge, immeasurably pleased with itself, its red breast, the 
hips and haws. 

Claudia was early, but she did not trouble herself about 
that; did not, as so many girls would have done, slip 
slyly backward under the fence when she caught the sound 
of horses’ hoofs squelching in the wet mud of the lane, 
then advance afresh with an air of surprise so that she 
might not appear too eager for the meeting with Blagden. 
He was a little late, but she had known he was coming and 
did not concern herself about anything this special morn¬ 
ing, beyond the thought of the horse he would bring with 
him, the ride for its ow r n sake. She was all on edge for 
that, hungry and thirsty, with a keen appetite for motion. 

She saw Blagden raise his cap at the further side of the 
hedge and thought: “His hair’s like the weasel’s coat,” 
but that was all; and then she had done with him, was 
scrambling through the fence and down the steep bank 
into the lane at the further side, her eyes intent on the 
little shining bay mare, with the groom, already dis¬ 
mounted, tightening the girths of the side saddle. 

Lord Blagden had been bored when he was awakened 
at what he called “an ungodly hour” that morning; 
wondering moodily why the deuce he had let himself in for 
such a scatter-brain adventure, at his age, too. But 
directly he saw Claudia with her rosy cheeks and bright 
eyes, waving at him above the hips and haws, all this 


128 


REPUTATION 


passed, and he was as young, as excited as she was. “A 
hare-brained adventure”—well, that was what he liked; 
the sort of thing that made life really worth living; better 
than all the set sports in the world. 

He got down from his horse and swung her to the 
saddle, arranging her skirts, smiling at her; then re¬ 
mounted and they rode off together, without a thought for 
the groom, whom Gertrude had taught in her own Sunday- 
school class, left to kick his heels in the damp grass and 
brood over his wrongs, his breakfastless condition, the 
ways of people who were old enough to know better. 

“I couldn’t put on a habit—it’s a horrid old thing, any¬ 
how, used to belong to Maude—because they would have 
wanted to know what I had been doing when I got back. 
Oh, isn’t it lovely—lovely! I thought it was going to rain; 
it was as misty as anything half an hour ago, and last 
night, too, horrid with the new moon in the arms of the 
old. But it’s all come to nothing, and it’s lovely— 
lovely! Doesn’t it smell lovely—clean and lovely?” 

She could think of no other adjective. They had 
reached the end of the lane, were out on a field, so wide 
—stretching up to the sky with no single break of hedge 
—that it might have been a shoulder of the Sussex Downs. 

“There is a wind coming—the sunrise wind. Let’s 
gallop, do let’s gallop. I only hope I shall keep tidy.” 
She was patting at her skirts; but not really minding, 
staring straight in front of her with shining eyes. 

“I hope you won’t,” Lord Blagden spoke with more 
daring than he had up to now allowed himself; but it was 
the sort of morning for taking risks. His eyes were bright 
as hers and far warmer; it was impossible to believe that 
he was long past the age when men begin to feel cross and 
sluggish in the morning. But he might have said what 
he liked without rebuke, for Claudia was off and away. 

Oh, but it was wonderful, wonderful! She wondered 
if motion like this was the commonplace of people with 
11 real horses,” for the bay moved under her like a thick 


REPUTATION 


129 


twist of, weft of, pliant silk, flying in and out between the 
warp of pale greenish-grey grass and blue-grey sky. But 
no, no; it was something more vital than that, like a heart 
beating, racing as her own heart beat—beat and raced. 

The hill was not very steep though it looked it, cutting 
the sky in the way it did, and the bay never checked in 
its gallop: excited by the sound of Blagden’s great grey 
thundering behind it. 

At the top it paused for one moment, and then went 
on down the steep slope at the further side, with the same 
grass field running, in rounded curves like a woman’s 
bosom, to the stream and low hedge that lay at the bottom 
of it. 

Claudia had no idea what was going to happen; she 
had never jumped anything in her life, but she did not 
care. She felt the little bay gather itself together and 
rise; while her own every nerve and muscle was tightened 
as though she were lifting the whole weight. For one 
moment they seemed to be separated, and the dreadful 
thought as to what Lord Blagden would think of her if 
she “cut a voluntary” flashed through her mind; then 
they were both over and mounting the second slope; 
topping it in the full glare of a still rosily-flushed sun, 
with the village of Long Norton, its squat tower, its faint 
spirals of blue smoke, in the valley beneath them. 

In a moment Blagden joined her, and for once it was 
he who retained a certain amount of sense. For when she 
began to shake her reins as a preliminary to starting off 
afresh, he pointed out that it was already past eight, and 
if she wanted to be back for breakfast at nine—with a 
thought of his own—they had better turn. 

“We can’t go back at the rate we’ve come, you know,” 
he said. 

“I would like to go on for ever and ever and ever, and 
never go back. It’s lovely, too lovely going on, and always 
hateful going back—going back anywhere, anyhow. My 
governess used to drag me out for walks where we just 


130 


REPUTATION 


went and came back. It was deadly ! 9 ’ She hesitated for 
a moment, then added portentously: “An epitome of life 
and its dullness,” rather uncertain as to whether she had 
got the right word. 

“There are some things from which one can never come 
back,” said Blagden. He caught at her right hand; then 
laughed, as though to brush aside any air of serious mean¬ 
ing. “I’m going to see if your pulse is steady after that 
leap.” 

Claudia slipped her wrist forward into his grasp: 
“Steady as a rock—feel it now, feel it.” 

** Going like a young steam-hammer; but still, I suppose, 
what you’d call steady, considering the way in which 
you’ve ridden my best gee pretty well to death.” 

“We’ll go back slowly,” said Claudia. She was sud¬ 
denly grave. The bay was panting, quivering, but it was 
not that; all the pink had gone from the sky, but it was 
not that either; nothing more, indeed, than something a 
little too confident in Blagden’s laughing glance; some¬ 
thing too warm, too, somehow pulsating in the touch of 
his fingers. Really he did not, at that moment, look in 
the very least like a man who needed anyone to take care 
of him—misunderstood, unloved—and this annoyed her. 

She straightened her skirts primly, horrified at the 
realisation of a tiny hem of white below one knee. She 
was wearing her old ulster, which had seemed so trim and 
tidy to start with; but now it was all rucked up, her 
stockings rucked down, the skirt of her dress twisted side¬ 
ways. Her tam-o’-shanter was sideways, too, rakish over 
one crimson cheek. To Lord Blagden’s eye she looked 
adorable because of her youth, her complete difference to 
the women to whom he was accustomed in the hunting- 
field—with their hard shining hats and flowing habits, 
their tight, short-tailed bodices—adorable until she pursed 
her lips like that, and then ridiculous as a still-adored child 
“playing at ladies.” 

She caught his glance, the amusement of it, and was 


REPUTATION 


131 


angry because she was not properly dressed; thought that 
he was making fun of that hem of flat, white embroidery, 
and determined that she would never go out for a ride, 
never go anywhere with him again. 

As he caught her, however, jumping proudly out of 
the saddle at Burrows’ barn, she relented. She simply 
must ride again because of the bay; she could not give that 
up—and there were other things ... A long life bare of 
all adventures such as this seemed to roll itself out in front 
of her; a life bereft of Blagden’s rallying and admiring 
glance; the applause he accorded her for every small sally 
of wit; the sense of being immensely, if in some way almost 
over, appreciated. Besides, he was humble now. 

* ‘ I’ve never enjoyed anything quite so much in all my 
life; you don’t know what it means having a pal like this,,” 
he said. And then: “’Pon my soul, I’ve been damned 
lonely, you know. I don’t think there was ever any man 
so frightfully lonely, in the way of anyone really caring, 
bothering their heads about things he likes.” 

He really thought it. And that is the worst of intense 
egotism—it is catching; he had never pictured himself as 
being unappreciated before, though, of course, her lady¬ 
ship was, as he had always said, “A bit of an icicle.” 

“I don’t know what the devil I’d do if you turned me 
down.” 

He looked so appealing that Claudia’s heart was 
touched; there were tears in her eyes as she looked at 
him. 

“I’m not likely to do that; I never turned anyone down 
in all my life, ’ ’ she said; then added suddenly, with a 
vivid blush: “Oh, you poor dear!” and turning, ran, 
gathering up her ridiculous skirts, pushing her way 
through the hedge at the lower side of the lane, and 
speeding away up the steep field towards the Rectory 
orchard. 

She was deeply touched and very hungry. So was 
Blagden. “The little darling!” he thought. But all the 


132 


REPUTATION 


same, it was she alone who felt that she ought not to eat 
the sort of breakfast that she did; that it was not right 
for a person in love. 

Francie was there, peaked and drawn, looking almost as 
though she had been bled. 

Gertrude’s nose was blue with cold; Granny glanced at 
her, then fixed her keen little eyes upon Claudia’s glow¬ 
ing face. 

“Whatever devilry you’ve been up to, young woman, 
you look the better for it; better than your sister does, 
with all her chasing after curates.” 

Gertrude flushed angrily, the flush beginning in her fore¬ 
head, as it always did. She opened her mouth, then shut 
it tight and tried to look meek as befitted one who had 
been to early service; confident that some day or other a 
thunderbolt must fall and destroy this wicked woman 
whom her grandfather had been misguided enough to 
marry. “I will repay, saith the Lord!” Somehow or 
other this was the way in which Gertrude always thought 
of Him; as Someone who would make people suffer for 
the way in which they treated her; Someone who, not 
quite so well-bred as herself, would descend to petty 
retaliation, and get her own back for her. 


CHAPTER XII 


The Leesgrove woods were dark and sodden, like some¬ 
thing dead by drowning: the beech-mast and fern black 
with past frost, flattened into a slime by the present thaw. 

A constant drip of moisture fell from the trees, unstirred 
by so much as a breath of wind, like the slow tears of a 
hopeless and dreary despair that felt everything—frost 
and thaw and sodden calm—altogether too much for it. 
There was no fog, but the atmosphere was so charged with 
damp that familiar objects appeared distorted and un¬ 
familiar, double their usual size, while it was impossible to 
judge of distance. 

The woods were, for the most part, strangely silent. 
When there was any sound it held a peculiarly far-away 
and flattened echo, like the thin, piping voice of a ghost, 
muffled in grave-clothes. 

Claudia Waring and Blagden had quarrelled, really 
quarrelled, about that question of going to tea with him. 
By this time it did not seem to matter in the very least 
what she did; and she only stood out against it because 
he had lost his temper when she refused—or so she told 
herself—to be dictated to. Though it was not altogether 
this, either, for she was, in reality, still afraid afraid as 
one is in the dark and ashamed of her fear. 

She was very confident about him. When he had swung 
off in a rage, away from her, here in this very wood 
a week ago, she had been quite certain of seeing him or 
getting a message from him next day. There was a sly, 
squinty little boy working in the Rectory gardens, whom 
they used as their go-between; for in some ways she was 
losing her head and her pride. She did not mind bribing 
the boy, binding him to a secrecy which she knew that he 


134 


REPUTATION 


would nJt respect; while, though she realised that people 
talked, she was overcome by that stupid idea—which falls 
like a thick pall over the mentality of the brightest—that 
they did not talk about her; that she and Blagden moved 
in a world apart. 

Throughout the entire week she had made a point of 
passing the squinty boy at least twice a day; she tried not 
to look at him: ‘ ‘ If he has a letter he will give it to me,’’ 

she thought, endeavouring above all else, to keep a 
surprised, hurt, humiliating question out of her glance. 
But she always did look, saw him with his queer eyes 
gazing in two directions at once; both away from her, 
and therefore both at her, with a hateful grin on his 
sallow face. 

At first she was confident and half laughing. Then, 
as time went on, the thought that Lord Blagden might 
actually be able to do without her forced itself upon her 
mind. How many times had he said: “What would I 
do without you? Hang it all, I never knew how lonely 
it all was, how abominably chilly!” But men said things 
like that. Claudia had Granny’s opinion of men by heart 
and agreed with it, save for this one exception. For, 
with the stupidity of conceit, it had never even entered her 
head that anyone who once cared for her could cease to 
care. She was not to everybody’s taste, prided herself 
upon this as though it were not easy enough to be dis¬ 
liked; but once anyone liked her they were not likely to 
change. She had really believed that, oblivious of the way 
in which people will get tired of pate, or caviare, and yet 
continue to eat bread with relish throughout their entire 
life; which accounts for the popularity of many very 
stupid people. 

But now, after a week, during which she was in turns 
furious, restless and afraid, her pride was all aflame at 
the idea of being “left”; given the go-by—as the kitchen- 
maid at the Rectory had been given it by her young man, 
and made a ridiculous song about it, too—all strung up 


REPUTATION 


135 


with misery and amazement, though somewhat comforted 
by a clear picture of herself just now, walking to and fro, 
desolate and distraught and Lady Macbethish, in the drip¬ 
ping twilight of Leesgrove woods. 

She had tied up Pickles before she left home. “You 
never take that unfortunate dog of yours out for a walk,” 
was what the others said, and she replied that the reason 
was because he poached. But it was not really that; rather 
that she knew herself to be poaching—though she never 
put it into words, even to herself—and was ashamed to 
meet her dog’s eyes. 

And, strangely enough, these were the only eyes that she 
was ashamed to meet; while Pickles alone, apart from 
Francie, was affected by her behaviour; and as seriously 
as dog can well be. It was the knowledge of this which 
made her feel furious with him whenever she tied him up 
at home, muttering something about: “If only you had 
the sense not to follow me when I tell you not to; if you 
were that sort of dog I would not need to tie you at all, 
you idiot, you!” An altogether unfair speech, for what 
she had always delighted in was the fact that Pickles was 
not at all that sort of dog; was, indeed, as unruly as she 
herself, and frantically and unreasonably affectionate; 
while she had taken the greatest pride in the manner in 
which he would break loose from all bounds, tracking her 
with a crescendo of yelps; circling and leaping round 
her when he found her; his clear brown eyes bright with 
pleasure, devoid of the faintest grudge against her for the 
way in which he had been left—even in these days, though 
it was plain that what had once seemed right about him 
was now altogether wrong. 

But of course everything was changed. Claudia herself 
thought that she had grown up above trifles, and showed it 
by the contemptuous wonder with which she looked upon 
those things which had once amused and interested her, 
such as learning Italian; though she was more tolerant 
towards other people so long as they did not cross her 


136 


REPUTATION 


path; for the simple reason that she was so engrossed that 
she forgot about them. Indeed, her greatest grievance 
against Pickles might lie in the fact that he alone intruded 
himself upon the detachment in which she enwrapped her¬ 
self, the world in which she and Blagden chose to pretend 
that they moved apart; though there were others who must 
at least have guessed at it, drawn their own deductions. 

One afternoon, only a few days before that quarrel, they 
had been sitting in the sunshine, which was now beginning 
to be rare, so faint and short-lived, upon the sand beneath 
the golden cliff of the Quarry Wood, when they heard a 
rustle in the bushes above them, and looking up saw Mr. 
Ashton staring down, his face with its small, fair side- 
whiskers and clear healthiness—so obviously just the hail- 
well-met fellow, man-and-Christian sort of face, apart from 
the curiously blank hardness of the blue eyes, the length of 
the tight upper lip—surmounted by the smooth black wide¬ 
awake, topping the bushes oddly enough. 

He did not take off his hat. He shouted no salutation, 
not even his usual, “Well, how are we to-day?” which 
one might have thought a habit; merely withdrew. 

Doubtless he was horribly embarrassed; was there by 
the merest chance, taking a short, long-striding cut to some 
distant cottage, for he was an indefatigable visitor. But 
while Blagden was amused, twitting Claudia over her 
“tame curates,’’ Claudia was virtuously indignant; as 
though no one had any business to be abroad, apart from 
themselves. “The cheek of it; he’s like that,” she said, 
“like an under-servant, the little beast!” All the same, 
she did not care twopence what Ashton thought, who he 
told; it was just that he had no business there at all. 

It was different when they met Knowles; for Knowles, 
with his pretence of not seeing them—so that Blagden had 
almost to push himself in front of the keeper with his, 
“Well, Knowles!” and some questions about the pheasants, 
hating this pretence as he hated the man himself—left 
them with a sense of being altogether smirched; while 


REPUTATION 


137 


such was the constrained contrariness and childishness of 
his master that he would, after such meetings, have taken 
any sort of advantage of Claudia simply because Knowles 
believed it of him. At least, that is what he felt like; 
though he did not really want to; would, in the end, have 
been held back by that something curiously matter-of-fact 
in the girl’s attitude towards him. She had confessed to 
loving him, almost thrown it at his head, defying herself 
not to love him; but all the same she seemed to take it for 
granted that nothing could ever come of it because he was 
married. If his wife died, she would marry him; she 
was quite distinct upon this point, and certainly anyone 
who behaved in the way Lady Blagden did—“Like a 
marble mantelpiece over a fireplace, too damned small for 
any fire” as his lordship said—deserved to die. 

Meanwhile they were just friends. She had feelings, 
there was no doubt about that; queer, misty feelings, when 
he held her hand, or kissed her. But that was only be¬ 
cause he was a man and she loved him; it did not mean 
anything that could possibly prove dangerous or pass be¬ 
yond her control, she was sure of that; that was why she 
allowed herself to be kissed, because it was ridiculous to 
make a fuss about a thing that did not really matter be¬ 
tween friends; while it seemed, in the light of what fol¬ 
lowed, that she was right; though only by the measure of 
a hair-breadth, or rather, let us say, that film of ice which 
lay over her own nature and which Blagden never really 
succeeded in breaking. 

Someone said of her later: “She’s like cat’s-ice, cold 
and shallow.” But she was not really shallow, only the 
cat ’s-ice part of her; there were depths of real womanhood, 
blocked by precocity until very much later in life. For 
precocious passions, the cleverness and self-consciousness 
of a very young person, are not the real thing at all; are, 
indeed, often enough like that sudden softening and bloom 
of under-sized fruit which drops from the tree before it 
reaches maturity. 


138 


REPUTATION 


The way in which she treated Pickles was typical of the 
way in which she treated the entire family. As to the 
people of Leesden village, apart from the workpeople, 
they were like those staring lay-figures, which come and 
go so oddly in a dream. 

Very soon Francie—and she had loved Francie better 
than anyone on earth—would be leaving England; and yet 
the appeal of her every glance, her tearful eyes, her quick, 
timid embraces passed by Claudia with no more effect than 
the irritatingly playful touch of a feather against the cheek 
of some deeply-engrossed person. Sometimes, indeed, they 
would come back to her when she was alone, as though 
from a great distance. But in general it was only by a 
deliberate wrench that she opened herself to the realisation 
of what was happening, with a sort of—“Look here, you, 
Claudia, you must make myself take this in.” Very often 
she would wake in the early morning with this feeling of 
there being something afoot; but almost immediately her 
brain would fasten upon Blagden, the source of it all, and 
everything else be forgotten. 

Even if she set out to put it plainly to herself, in some 
such form as, 4 ‘ Francie is going to Africa; she will never 
sleep in my room again; I may never see her again. 
I . . .” she would break off before she got to the end, with 
a shameful sense of relief at the thought that once Francie 
was gone, and she had the room to herself, she could walk 
up and down it for half the night if she liked, free of her 
sister’s tearful glance; her hands clasped at the back of 
her neck as she loved to hold them, her lungs expanded; 
her whole being cleared, as it were, for something which 
even then, when she tried to put it plainly to herself, she 
could not be sure was Blagden: rather the something which 
must be going to happen to her own self. 

In truth, she could be sure of nothing. When she told 
herself that she loved this man she seemed to be up against 
a wall; so close that she could see nothing, while it threw 
the sound of her own voice back upon her. She visualised 


REPUTATION 


139 


other people very plainly, but when she tried to visualise 
him everything was blurred; as to the future, she could 
build no castles in the air as she had always done, for 
there was nothing to build upon. 

When they had first known each other, she had seemed 
to be more alive; more, somehow, brilliant than she had ever 
been before; had an enormous amount to say to him. 

But that was past, and in these days she seemed to be 
suffering from a strange sort of languor of mind and body. 
She was no longer conquering and pert; when she did defy 
Blagden, as in this matter of going to tea at Leesden, she 
forced herself to it out of pride. She did not know how 
she could ever live without him, the stimulus of his com¬ 
pany, his admiration; she thought of him without ceasing 
when they were apart; but all the same she was, as often 
as not, bored when she was with him: looking upon him 
with a sort of contempt for his heaviness. “Your face is 
too red,” she would think; “you ought not to eat and 
drink so much. You are too old for this or that—too 
slow!” 

One day in those far woods which lay beyond Leesgrove 
woods, beyond the hall itself, she had run away from him, 
dared him to catch her. Blagden had been sensible enough 
not to attempt any pursuit, however, and she had come 
back to him—to heel, really to heel, and for the first time 
—ashamed of being such a tomboy; ashamed of her own 
callow youth. 

All this came and went in sudden streaks, in startling 
contrast to that sort of yearning over him as a something 
helpless and alone, needing her most dreadfully; needing 
her more than anyone had ever done. 

But now, once again, now that he had shown that he 
could live without her, remain without her, she was as 
nearly as possible to heel; though, after all, no nearer than 
his woods, pacing them as wearily as though her very 
garments were weighed down by the damp. 

She was almost out of them, had an idea of cutting 


140 


REPUTATION 


across one side of the park, where she could not possibly 
be seen from the house, and so on into the further woods, 
when she heard Pickles’ following bark, high and wild, 
and turned back a few steps into the wood; whistling, for 
she did not want him to come careering after her into the 
open. 

She was just thinking that when she did catch him—or, 
rather, when he caught her—she would thrash him as he 
deserved, irritated at being jerked out of her morass of 
misery, for she was still at the age to hug her sorrows, 
when the yapping cry was broken by a sharp scream of 
pain; another and yet another. 

She knew that sound, for her dog had once had his paw 
caught in a trap and screamed just like that. All grudge 
forgotten, she called out: “All right, all right, Pickles; 
all right, old dog, I’m coming,” and began to run in the 
direction from which the sound had come; then drew up, 
suddenly conscious that it had ceased, and called again, 
called and called, but still without response, thoroughly 
frightened by the silence, for Pickles was not the sort of 
dog to give up letting everybody know when he was hurt. 

Unless he were dead . . . dead . . . Pickles dead. 

Claudia’s heart began to go like a steam-hammer, almost 
choking her; she felt sick and clammy-cold. If Pickles 
was dead there was an end of everything— everything . She 
had not a thought for Blagden. 

For a long time she ran to and fro, calling, but there 
was no answering yap, no rustle among the undergrowth. 
At last, far away from the place from which she had first 
started, she stood still, feeling physically sick. 

There had been sharp agony in those three high 
screams; if Pickles had been hurt and then started to 
run home or towards her, there would have been a run¬ 
ning trail of agonised yelps, ceasing as he reached her side 
or dying away in the distance; again, if he had been caught 
in a trap he would have gone on lamenting until he was 
found. 


REPUTATION 


141 


No, he was dead; that was it, he was dead. . . . 

Overcome by despair, she turned with stumbling foot¬ 
steps—for it seemed as though all the strength were gone 
out of her legs—to make her way back to the main path; 
for the light was beginning to fail, and she realised that 
she must wait until the next day to seek for the body of 
her pet. 

After she had gone a little way she heard the sound of 
someone else walking in the woods, thrusting their way 
through the undergrowth. The steps seemed to be con¬ 
verging towards her own; but she could see nobody, and 
stood quite still, trembling, trying not to breathe. For 
though she was no coward, there is something terrifying 
in the sound of the footsteps of an unseen person in a 
dense wood, with all the other whisperings and rustlings; 
particularly at twilight, for trees lend themselves in a 
strange way to terror. 

Then, quite suddenly, crossing an open patch in front 
of her, she saw Knowles. 

He was hurrying along with bent head. He looked al¬ 
together evil; he was carrying a small brown sack, rather 
larger than they use for ferrets, in one hand. Directly 
she saw him Claudia began to run towards him, calling. 
She was no longer in despair; Pickles was in that bag, all 
muffled up so that he could make no sound. She was 
convinced of this. 

Knowles turned his head once, for a moment. A queer 
flush of watery sunshine, the first and last of the day, cut 
above the hazel wands, and beneath the thicker boughs 
of the oak and ash and beech, full upon his face, pointed 
like a fox’s, sidelong and sly; she could even see the whites 
of his eyes—cruel and sinister there in the dim, half- 
darkened woods. Then he was gone, though she called 
and kept on calling, in a tone of sharp command. 

She ran into the thick of the wood where he had disap¬ 
peared, ran and called; pushing her way through the 
whipping hazels with their rasping dry leaves; calling and 


142 


REPUTATION 


running until her knees shook, all wet beneath her; while 
her own voice sounded hoarse and flat in her ears. 

At last she drew up, her body dripping, her mind sud¬ 
denly and completely cool, frozen with anger. It was no 
good going to the head keeper’s lodge; she would meet 
with nothing but insolent denials there. She would go 
straight to Blagden; Knowles was his servant; it was he 
who must assert himself. 

She thought of Blagden with angry contempt; if he did 
not assert himself now, prove himself master, she had done 
with him. There was no shadow of girlish prudery, of 
ordinary prudence, of any sort of shyness, and no faintest 
memory of their quarrel, left in her. It seemed, somehow, 
that Blagden was a person to be fought, almost as much 
as Knowles himself; she even said it herself, muttering 
between her teeth as she did when she was angry, involv¬ 
ing everyone in her scorn. li They ’re all much of a much¬ 
ness, these foxy men!” 

She knew where she was; she was cool enough for that 
now. Leesgrove Hall lay to the west of the wood; and in 
the sky above it—so much of it as was visible above the 
trees—there was still a faint, sickly gleam. 

She was business-like with the brambles and hazels. She 
did not attempt to run; but she moved the more quickly 
for that, with no single false step. 

She got out of the wood into the park rather to the 
left of the usual place, where there was a deep ditch, 
some barbed wire and low, overhanging boughs. Between 
the three of them she lost her hat, and by this time it was 
so dark that she did not stay to look for it. 

It was better out in the clear of the park, with its scat¬ 
tered trees; and here she began to run, down the long slope 
and up the shorter one to the garden; scrambling up the 
sunk fence with the help of a hurdle, left behind from a 
long line, which had been extended down the hill, then 
crossed by others for herding sheep; during one of those 
many years when the entire family was away. 


REPUTATION 


143 


As she reached the front door she rang the hell imperi¬ 
ously, felt herself insulted by the very short interval which 
elapsed before it was answered. For though some people 
feel their limbs turn to water when they are angry, Claudia 
Waring felt queenly, as though nothing would ever frighten 
her again. 

When a footman appeared she demanded Blagden. She 
did not ask if he were at home; she knew that he was at 

home. 

“Please to tell Lord Blagden that I wish to see him,” 
she said—Claudia, a mere chit, the younger sister of 
that young Mrs. Francie Stevens who had never yet 
ceased to blush over and stumble over the smallest social 
venture! 

The man hesitated, peering forward. He saw that this 
late visitor was without a hat, and he could not imagine 
who in the world it was, looking like a gypsy and yet speak¬ 
ing as she did; for he knew a lady’s voice, a great lady’s 
manner, and no more dared to turn her away than he 
dared to show her in. 

“I’ll enquire,” he muttered; and was retreating when 
the butler, whose wife lived in Leesden village, and who 
knew all the Waring family perfectly, moved forward 
from the back of the hall. 

“Oh, it’s I—Miss Claudia Waring—Felton, and I want 
to see Lord Blagden,” said Claudia loftily. 

“His lordship has a cold, Miss Claudia; I’m sure I don’t 
know ...” One never could be sure with his lordship 
where a petticoat was concerned. “He just sent me to say 
he was not at home to anyone.” 

“Oh, that’s all right. He’ll see me; he must see me— 
which room is it?” 

A door at the far end of the double hall was opened a 
crack, as though someone was trying to peer out without 
being seen, then flung wide. 

“Hullo! You, you!” Lord Blagden moved forward 
a step or two. It was plain that he was surprised and de- 


144 


REPUTATION 


lighted; though, happily enough—for even in the midst of 
all her other preoccupations Claudia might have scented 
that—untriumphant; or with wit enough to hide it. 

“I say, this is good of you! I’ve had an awful cold, 
been in bed. The doctor’s bound me down now to stay 
in one room out of draughts—first day down an’ all—so 
I mustn’t hang about out here. But come in, come in. 
. . . By Jove, if you knew how bored I’ve been—how 
jolly it is to see you.” He retreated; and crossing the 
hall, Claudia entered the library, while Felton closed the 
door discreetly behind her. 

The moment she was safely within the room Blagden 
took her in his arms and kissed her, warmly and huggingly 
like a great boy. 

“By God! You’re a sight for sore eyes in this mauso¬ 
leum of a place. And how nice you smell—of my woods. 
I go bail.” 

He kissed her again, and for a moment Claudia leant up¬ 
on him; she was dreadfully tired, slack with the heat of 
running, her own emotion, and it was good to be made 
much of. 

As he drew back, however, both hands on her shoulders, 
laughing, asking her what the devil she had done with her 
hat, her anger—that queer sort of contempt for this man, 
along with the rest of his sex—swept back over her. 

“That keeper of yours, that man Knowles, you’ll please 
to send word to him, tell him to give me back my dog. 
Now, now at once! ’ ’ 

Lord Blagden stared. “Your dog? What on 
earth-?” 

“Yes, my dog. I suppose you know I had a dog, or 
have you forgotten that too?” 

“Claudia—look here, I’ve had a pretty rotten time of 
it—inflammation of the lungs as near as nothing—all 
alone here, with no one but the servants. ... So devilish 
glad to see you and all, and now, at the very first go off, 
you turn nasty.” 



REPUTATION 145 

‘ ‘Have you been ill—really ill? Was that it? Was 
that why you didn’t write or anything ? ’ ’ 

Claudia caught hold of the lapel of his coat, patted him, 
soothed him, for indeed he did look ill, pale and pathetic, 
with a voice as hoarse as a crow. “Oh, you dear, you poor 
dear! Why didn’t you let me know. I’d have come; 
have come at once and nursed you. You mustn’t stand 
about like this; you must keep by the fire. Come back to 
the fire; and look here, your tea’s all getting cold. . . . 
But first of all ring the bell.” 

“What on earth for? Oh, another cup, of course! 
How stupid of me!” 

“No, to tell Felton to send someone to Knowles to fetch 
my dog. No, no, not that, they’ll be some hanky-panky; 
he’ll lie. To tell him to bring it here, that Miss Waring is 
here and waiting for her dog.” 

“Well, I’m damned!” Blagden sat down suddenly in 
the deep chair at the back of him, and Claudia herself 
rang, or rather pealed, the bell. 

When Felton appeared she looked at Blagden in such a 
way that he was forced to give the order; trying to make a 
light matter of it. ‘ ‘ Oh, Felton, I want you to send Lewis, 
or one of the others, to the head keeper’s-” 

“At once,” Claudia interrupted. 

“Oh yes, at once, of course. Miss Waring’s afraid that 
he may have shut up her dog, or something, caught it 
poaching—we all know what Knowles is with poachers, eh, 
Felton? Anyhow, tell him I want it here.” 

“He’s to bring it here himself,” said Claudia. 

“Yes, yes, tell him to bring it himself. Miss Waring is 
naturally very anxious about her pet, Felton. And u-r-r 
—you might bring some more tea.” 

Directly the man had left the room, Claudia—standing 
on the hearthrug, looking down at Blagden like a young 
judge—said: “I give you fair warning, if you fail me in 
this I’ll never forgive you.” 

“How do you mean—fail you?” 



146 


REPUTATION 


41 Allow that man to overide you.” 

“I'm not in the habit of allowing my servants to over¬ 
ride me,” said Blagden sulkily, as resentful as we all are 
of unpleasant truths. And then, because she was so lithe 
and slim like a young hazel wand, with cheeks and lips so 
bright a carnation; eyes so dark and shining; hair, for all 
its tags of beech-leaf and lichen, still so queerly smooth 
and glossy, he put out both arms towards her, sitting there 
rather like a Sultan in his low chair. 

“Come here and tell me what youII give me if I get 
back your dog for you, you madcap, you!” 

She leant forward over him and kissed him coolly and 
lightly on the lips, a kiss that smelt of the woods and the 
evening mist. 4 ‘ That, ’ ’ she said, without, in reality, think¬ 
ing overmuch of it, or of him either; rather of Pickles and 
how glad he would be to see her—dear Pickles!—though it 
might have struck her as odd, if she had found time for 
her usual introspection, to think how very soon kisses had 
grown to seem of but little matter, one way or another; 
realise the contrast there was between the rage and burn¬ 
ing shame occasioned by that first kiss, outside the gate 
of the Long Wood, and her feeling now, when of course 
there was nothing wrong in it. 

“I shall want more than that,” said Blagden, and was 
pulling her towards him when there was a discreet fum¬ 
bling at the door, as though Felton—coming with fresh 
tea and buttered toast and another cup, and generally so 
very capable and deft—could not find the handle, had 
difficulty in turning it when it was found. 

“That girl o’ the Rector’s a wild un, an’ no mistake 
about it!” he said in the housekeeper’s room a moment 
or so later. “Wild as the woods, I call her.” And there 
could have been nothing much wilder than that to his or¬ 
derly indoor mind. 

Claudia poured out her tea and drank it, ate her but¬ 
tered toast with relish. She was certain of Pickles now, 


REPUTATION 


147 


and really enjoying herself; wondering why she had hes¬ 
itated to come here like this, when everything seemed so 
natural; when even Felton had treated her exactly like 
any grown-up visitor, to all appearances totally un¬ 
concerned. 

“It beats me what you want to bring that fellow 
Knowles here for; anyone else could have fetched the dog, ’ ’ 
grumbled Blagden. “And after all, how can you be sure 
that he’s got it ? ” 

“I know that he’s got it, I’m certain sure that he’s got 
it. I feel it in my bones. Why ...” Once again she 
repeated all that had happened, ending up with: “Be¬ 
sides, I want to see him humiliated.” 

“He’ll only go chattering all over the place about you 
being here.” 

“I suppose they’ll all do that anyhow. Well, let them; 
I believe you’re afraid of him.” 

Blagden laughed—a rather forced laugh. “Oh, that’s 
what you believe, is it? Oh, well, we’ll see what we can 
do to dispel that impression, anyhow. And now, where do 
I come in? What will you do for me?” He seemed glad 
to shift back to the old ground. 

Claudia, having finished her tea, had risen to her feet 
and was standing once again upon the hearthrug. She 
turned and gave a little kick to the logs upon Blagden’s 
hearth. 

“I love to see them all break up like that, red flame and 
velvety grey ash—lovely, lovely! ’ ’ she said, and turning 
again, raised her arms and stretched herself. 

The action was perfectly natural; if she had thought of 
any trick which might have enhanced her value she would 
have been too proud to use it, was quite pleased enough 
with herself as it was. All the same, she could have made 
no movement more seductive; bringing into relief as it did 
her small, firm breasts and fine, clean-lined limbs, so like 
a thoroughbred. 


148 


REPUTATION 


“Do for you?” she asked. “Oh, anything—anything 
on earth to see that man Knowles really put into his 
place.” 

Blagden rose from his chair and stood in front of the 
fire beside her. Her hand was resting upon the mantel¬ 
shelf, and he clasped his fingers round the slender wrist. 

“Anything! I wonder if you know how much that 
means—darling.” 

He stooped his head and laid his lips upon the back of 
her hand; and somehow or other, and queerly enough, the 
kiss was more full of meaning, more disturbing than that 
welcoming embrace when he had actually touched her lips 
for the first time. But his thoughts and desires veered 
even then; for, though he did not realise it, he was still 
holding back, almost as a girl might hold back; did not 
really want to spoil this quaint friendship, so different 
to anything that had ever gone before, with its half-playful 
flavour of secrecy and love-making. If only she was not 
so damnably attractive—exciting. 

“Look here, why do you hate my head keeper so? Be¬ 
cause he's dared to lay a hand on that sacred mongrel?” 

“No, because he’s insolent, and I won’t have in¬ 
solence ...” 

Blagden laughed at this, and she added, laughing too, 
catching at the lapel of his coat and giving it a little shake: 
“From anyone apart from myself, you understand. But 
it isn’t only that. I believe I hate him most because—well, 
because he is, in a way, so dreadfully—of course it’s ridic¬ 
ulous, but there is something—like you.” 

Blagden’s face clouded. Glad to turn aside from those 
bright, clear eyes for a moment, he took a cigar from a 
silver box on the table at his elbow and lighted it; upon 
which Claudia, childishly interested and amused by every¬ 
thing in the room, glanced at the inscription on the lid. 
It had been given him upon the occasion of his marriage in 
1848, sixteen years before she was born. . . . Married, 
married and done for sixteen years before she was born, 


REPUTATION 149 

the man whom she loved, regarded as her playfellow and 
subject! It was amazing! 

“I hate the fellow!” said Blagden suddenly and em¬ 
phatically, upon which Claudia raised her eyes from the 
box and stared at him; so engrossed in her calculation 
of dates that, for a moment, she could not make out who 
he meant. 

“Oh, Knowles . . .” she said slowly: then, “Eighteen 
forty-eight—why, it’s back in the dark ages!” 

She was still ruminating over this, with Blagden staring 
down at her rather crossly, when Felton came to say that 
the head keeper was there; lingering a moment or so after 
he had shown him in, upon pretence of clearing away the 
tea; hoping to hear something of the row, if there was to 
be one. Though his own private opinion was that “that 
chap Knowles ’ud down his lordship,” and he had said as 
much in the servants’ hall. 

Knowles was holding Pickles, who had one bandaged 
leg, in his arms. Blagden had sunk back into his chair, 
was sitting with his legs crossed, smoking; rather elabo¬ 
rately careless, for he hated the idea of any sort of dispute 
with Knowles. As Claudia, who was still standing, very 
erect, stepped forward and took her dog from the man’s 
arms, he said: 

“Well, there you are,” in an easy, off-hand way, as 
though that was the end of it. 

Pickles, who had been whimpering a little, raised him¬ 
self upon his mistress’s chest, extending the hurt paw 
dolorously, trying to lick her face, still moaning; but she 
pushed his head down with her one hand and fixed her eyes 
upon Blagden’s face in a strangely hard glance, so that he 
felt compelled to speak, assert himself. 

“Now then, Knowles, how did this happen? Miss 
Waring has been very upset about her dog.” 

“I found the dog caught in a trap, your lordship. 
We’re forced to set traps in those woods or else we 
wouldn’t have a pheasant left with the lurcher dogs and 


150 REPUTATION 

all. I count that I was doin' my duty as I always try to 
do it." 

The man's words were perfectly respectful; hut there 
was something in the manner of them which rubbed his 
master raw. After all, he hated Knowles far more, and 
for far better reasons, than Claudia could ever have done. 
Indeed, he had never, apart from this man, hated anyone; 
thought the world a peculiarly jolly place, full of nice 
people. 

For no particular reason his anger grew and swelled. 
He could feel it up the veins at either side of his neck, 
so tight in his head that he could scarcely see, felt as 
though something must burst. Claudia’s eyes were still 
upon him, but he did not need them now—not as an in¬ 
centive, anyhow. He had been shut in the house for a 
week, and he was all nerves; added to this, he had only 
that morning received what he thought of as a damned 
nasty letter from her ladyship, taking it for granted that 
he would be, as it were, ready to come to heel by this time; 
as his mother had thought his father would come to heel 
when she, out of a mixture of spite and Christian principle, 
established this bastard son of his on her own estate—a 
continual reminder of his sin. 

“I couldn’t not be expected to know that it was Miss 
Waring's dog." 

“That's nonsense! You've seen the dog before; and 
Miss Waring tells me that she called to you, that you heard 
her and turned your head, then went on." 

“I heard someone calling, an’ I may 'a' turned my head, 
I don't not deny that. But as ter seein’, that was past 
me, nor anyone else neither, if your lordship 'ull excuse me 
saying so; seein' as how it was as near as nothing to black 
night in them there woods, and a man don’t look to see 
young ladies trapsin' about alone at a time like that. If 
I'd 'a' known it wur a friend o' your lordship’s . . ." 

In her absorption over the sort of influence which she 
felt herself to be exercising upon Blagden by her long, 


REPUTATION 


151 


half-scornful gaze, Claudia had pressed her dog close to 
her, so that he gave a sharp cry of pain, breaking into 
Knowles * words. She felt him all over carefully, and he 
winced and shivered, whimpering wherever she touched 
him, though his injured paw was hanging clear. 

“He’s beaten him!” she cried, and was surprised to find 
that she had been clenching her jaws so tightly in her 
effort at concentration that they ached as she moved 
them. “He’s beaten him, shamefully, cruelly!” 

Knowles glanced at her sideways in a way which re¬ 
minded her of that glance in the woods, a glance full of 
scorn and in its way as proud as her own. Here was a 
wanton, he thought, falluting about with a married man. 
His mother had been a wanton, too, pointed at and slighted, 
so he ought to know the breed if anyone did. 

“Supposin’ as ’ow I meets mongrels when I’m away 
about my duty I treats them as I’ve been taught as how 
mongrels ought to be treated,” he said sullenly. “If a 
keeper ain’t not there to stop all poaching, what is he there 
for, I’d like ter know? It’s I as have kept law and order 
in these ’ere woods all the years as his lordship was away, 
an’ no fault found neither.” 

‘ ‘ That’s enough, ’ ’ said Blagden; “ at the end of a month 
you can find another place.” 

“I’ve kept my place for close on forty years,” said 
Knowles; “an’ that’s more than a many will do that gets 
in with your lordship by getting me out.” 

“Clear out of this.” Lord Blagden sprang to his feet. 
“Clear out of this, now, before I kick you out! Do you 
hear?” 

Claudia held her dog to her breast, lightly so that she 
might not hurt it. Felton was gone, and the two men were 
very close together. Knowles’ eyes had left her, and they 
were glaring at each other, both very red in the face; 
Blagden the redder of the two, because he was the more 
stoutly built and choleric. She was strangely excited, and, 
in some queer way, delighted; thinking that there was 


152 


REPUTATION 


going to be a fight. No one could have said how she got it 
into her blood, but she loved a fight; had once dragged 
Piers into the very front row of a ring round two gipsies. 

"If you wasn’t my master, as well as in more nor a 
matter o’ speaking my blood relation ...” began Knowles 
with almost incredible insolence, upon which Blagden’s 
fist shot out and caught him full in the face, so that, for 
one moment, he staggered. 

There was a dreadful silence. Quite suddenly Claudia 
felt terrified, her heart beat up into her throat like a ham¬ 
mer; her one desire now was that Knowles should go. 
Forgetful of Pickles’ injuries, she hugged him so closely 
that he gave vent to an ear-splitting yelp. 

For a moment she made sure that the keeper would 
strike back; so did Blagden, cursing his own loss of self- 
control ; thinking how disastrous it would be to have a free 
fight here in his own house with his own servant. There 
would be a summons for assault, anyhow—he knew 
Knowles well enough for that; and Claudia Waring’s name 
dragged in the mud, the position in regard to his own wife 
worse than ever. Though even so, there was, away at the 
back of his mind, the thought that it would all, sooner 
or later, blow over, as everything did blow over. This, 
indeed, was the one feat of imagination of which he was 
capable—the picturing of everything as blowing over. 

But, after all, he did not know Knowles. Knowles did 
not care twopence about Miss Waring, one way or another. 
As a matter of fact, it would serve his purpose best to keep 
on good terms with everybody, apart from the great man 
who had chosen to spite him; spiting him in his turn; 
getting back something in return for the sense of wrong 
which had festered in him ever since he was a small boy 
and had first caught at something of the secret of his birth 
—which had really been no secret to anyone apart from 
himself. And this it was that had bitten more sharply 
than all else: the realisation of what it was that the other 
boys had been calling after him when he was too proud 


REPUTATION 


158 


to turn round; taking it for granted that they were en¬ 
vious of his fine clothes, the superiority that he felt in 
himself. He had been soft then—a soft little foot—but 
he was hard now. 

‘‘As for leavin’ your lordship in the way of bein’ head 
keeper, that’s as your lordship pleases,” he said, all his 
insolence smothered under something deeper, more danger¬ 
ous ; wiping the blood from his face with his red and white 
spotted handkerchief, speaking—as though nothing had 
passed since those words—“You can find another place at 
the end of the month—” so quietly and respectfully that 
his master was forced to the realisation that, in inheriting 
so little, he had, at least, inherited the old duke’s frozen 
way of showing his anger. “The more damnably cool, 
the more mischief he means,” as Blagden himself had 
said of his father—their father. 

“I don’t misdoubt as how we’ll rub along somehow or 
other with my wife takin’ a lodger or two. There’s a 
couple of rooms to spare in the cottage, and it’s a pleasant 
enough place in summertime.” 

“You’ll clear out of the cottage,” said Blagden, and re¬ 
peated the words to make them clear to himself; for it 
seemed as though a heavy sea were beating against his ears. 
“You’ll clear out of the cottage at the end of the month. 
I’ll be damned if you’ll stay on there for another day. As 
for taking lodgers, or any other damned thing on my 
land-” His own disgust and anger choked him. 

“Your lordship forgets that the late duchess left it to 
me for my life, with no restrictions whatever, ’ ’ said 
Knowles. 

He was right—that was what she had done—so like a 
woman, a sincere and pious woman, blind to everything 
and everybody apart from this making amends for a deadly 
sin, a wrong done. It was Knowles’ cottage, and there he 
would stay, spreading his venom throughout the entire 
countryside, refusing to be bought off—Oh yes, refusing 
that whatever the price! Knowles the martyr, there in the 



154 


REPUTATION 


very heart of Blagden’s estate; Knowles with his lodgers. 
And just now, too, now above all other times, when Lady 
Blagden’s last letter was in her husband’s pocket, promis¬ 
ing that she would help him over his present financial 
difficulties upon one condition, and one only: this being 
that he would settle down at Leesgrove, where she herself 
would shortly join him; live decently and quietly as a 
country gentleman should. 

Settle down at Leesgrove—settle down at Leesgrove! 
It had never seemed remotely possible; but now he found 
himself believing that it had been the one way open to him, 
the one sort of life that he could ever care for—and all 
this blocked, blocked for ever now, by that chap Knowles. 

The ex-keeper had his hand upon the door. “In that 
matter o’ what no court could call by any other name than 
an assault, I’ll be willing to keep my mouth shut, so long 
as there’s no further trouble; seein’ as how it’s an affair 
a’tween two o’ the same family.” 

He was gone. Blagden moved over to the fireplace and 
kicked at the logs, scattering a maze of orange sparks and 
grey ash; the deep crimson flush had subsided from his 
face, his hands were shaking as he took another cigar from 
the silver box. 

“Two o’ the same family”—there was the limit, and so 
unmistakenly plain to the most casual observer. For one 
moment, when he was disputing with Knowles, if one could 
be said to dispute with a servant, Blagden had caught 
sight of the other man’s face, then of his own in the mirror 
above the mantelpiece; but it was only now that the reali¬ 
sation of it came back to him—like a slide slipped into a 
magic lantern, a single slide alive with that odious likeness 
they had to one another, to their mutual father: that like¬ 
ness which had, ever since he grew up, maddened him even 
to think of. 

He was extraordinarily angry, righteously angry with 
the old duke, angrier than he had ever been before, with 
that queer, over-full feeling in his head; wondering how 


REPUTATION 


155 


any man who was a gentleman could have so far forgotten 
himself; completely forgetful of his own failings, all in 
precisely the same direction, though his follies lasted later 
into life than his father’s had done. 

Claudia Waring was not so much trembling as stiffened 
with excitement—a sense of self-importance. She was 
longing to make innumerable exclamations, ask innumer¬ 
able questions; but the memory of the exasperating effect 
of her mother’s garrulity at any crisis—though there had 
never been anything equal to this—kept her silent. 

Lord Blagden sat down rather heavily. There was a 
long silence while he stared at the floor in front of him; 
then he snapped his fingers at Pickles, whom Claudia had 
put down upon the hearthrug. 

* * Hello, cur! ” he said; then, as the dog dragged himself 
painfully towards him, raised his bloodshot eyes to Clau¬ 
dia. He seemed to have grown older during the last few 
minutes, ever since he lost his temper so completely, struck 
Knowles; but his eyes were younger than ever, puzzled and 
aggrieved, as though to ask what on earth did people want 
to be so confoundedly nasty for? After a moment his 
mouth twisted into a wry grin. 

“Well, it looks as though we’d got ourselves into a hell 
of a mess, eh, young woman ? ” he said; and stretched out 
one hand towards Claudia. He did not say: “All 
through you and your dog.” He used the “we” as 
though they were standing or falling together as all friends 
should, and Claudia was touched to the heart. 

She dropped to her knees at his side, and raising his 
hand laid it against her cheek, cooing and caressing; put 
her chin on his shoulder and rubbed her cheek against his. 

“The pig—the beast! How dare he, how dare he speak 
to you like that—how dare he ? To say you were relations, 
you and a man like that—even if it is true!” She had 
caught something of the gossip; and of course everyone 
had heard of things like that, read of them in history; 
though they were never spoken of excepting by Shake- 


156 


REPUTATION 


speare or in the Bible. “Yon, when you’re so good to 
everyone, you dear! Look here, is it true that you can’t 
turn him out? It can’t be true!” 

“I’m afraid it is.” 

“Never mind, you can go anywhere. After all, this 
stuffy old Leesgrove-cum-Leesden isn’t the only place in 
the world. Why, there’s Rome, and Venice, and 
Florence.” 

“Of course, and Monte; there’s always a chance of a 
stroke of luck in Monte.” Lord Blagden’s face brightened, 
then darkened again. “All the same, it’s a rotten idea 
for a man to be kept out of his own place by a chap like 
that. ’ ’ 

“He’s only got the house and garden, I suppose. You 
can build a wall round it, just on your own land; you can 
build it so high that he can’t see over it,” said Claudia. 
“You can forbid him to trespass in your woods, so that 
he can’t come out.” 

They both laughed at that, and Blagden put his arm 
round her hugging her tight; after all, what was the use 
of making oneself miserable over things in advance? 

“You’re a minx, that’s what you are. It’s all your 
doing, and now as to what you’re going to give me in re¬ 
turn, eh, young woman?” 

She was so warm, so sweet, that he had almost forgotten 
Knowles; while his outburst had left him with that languid 
feeling which one has after a long buffeting with a high 
wind. 

“ I ’ll give you anything, anything on earth; do any thing 
on earth for you. You know I will, you know it!” cried 
Claudia, still furiously indignant, altogether partisan. 

“After all, it’s a confoundedly lonely business playing 
about the Continent alone,” grumbled Blagden. He did 
not know why he said it, but he wanted all the sympathy 
that he could get. 

“I wish I could come with you, but I can’t.” 

It was odd how this crystallised what had, up to that 


REPUTATION 


157 


moment, been the merest mirage in Blagden’s mind; the 
fun it would be to show this bright child some of the ways 
of the world; the time of it they might have together. 

“And yet you say you’d do anything for me; what does 
that come to, eh?” He held her close, whispering, for 
the sheer comfort of her human nearness as much as 
anything. 

“Well, I’ll come with you, so there!” said Claudia. “If 
you really want me, I’ll come—after all, you’re the only 
person who does—want me, I mean. I don’t care a rap 
what anyone says; I don’t care twopence about the rest of 
the world. It doesn’t seem to me that it’s worth consid¬ 
ering; it’s nothing to me, it’s never done anything for 
me. I love you and nothing else matters, nothing, noth¬ 
ing! So there!—so there!” She repeated the words in 
her eager, flashing and impetuous way. 

Blagden took fire; she was going to his head—badly, too. 
Of course, he did not really mean to do any such mad thing 
as run away with the parson’s daughter. Though what 
fun it would be if it were really possible! Anyhow, what 
fun to pretend; build castles in the air, or rather, join in 
with Claudia’s building! 

“You’ll have to make up some tale about going to stay 
with a friend, or tarry-diddle of that sort. ’ ’ 

“I won’t!” said Claudia gallantly, pulling herself away 
from him to toss her head. “I hate lies. I’ll leave a note 
behind to say what I’ve done. There’ll be a fuss, but 
there’s a fuss if the eggs are boiled too little or too much at 
breakfast. Anyhow, it’s better to get it all over at once. 
We know our own minds and nothing can alter us, so 
where’s the good of pretending? And after all, what 
does it matter what anyone says? We’ll leave it all be¬ 
hind us.” 

There was that old defiant note in her voice, for she was 
fighting, even then, against what she knew to be true; that 
it did, and always would, matter what people said; that 
one couldn’t get away from it. 


158 


REPUTATION 


“Anyhow, everything will be different once we’re out 
of this mouldy old England: just you and I—and love.” 

She dropped her voice reverently at the last words. She 
did not know that she was acting, but that was what she 
was doing, with the scene all ready set; herself in a white 
dress, something “samite, mystic, wonderful,” in an old 
Italian garden, all steps and terraces and cypress-trees, 
very kind and sweet to Blagden. She really did not quite 
know what he meant when he talked of “Monte,” but this 
was what she meant. She pressed herself close against 
him. He was a dear, that’s what he was; and so kind, 
while people were beastly to him. 

“You’ll never have to complain of nobody caring again, 
you dear, you! Neither shall I; we shall have each other 
—nothing else matters!” 

He was bedazzled, bedevilled. Of course it was hair¬ 
brained nonsense, but why worry about that, about any¬ 
thing? He gathered Claudia up on his knee and held her 
there. It had all been tommy-rot, that notion of friendship 
between a man and woman: she was a darling, soft and 
fresh and fine; though still a prude without the slightest 
real knowledge of what it all meant. He could feel that 
in the way she stiffened under any more familiar touch; 
but it didn’t matter, he was tired and it was quite enough 
for him to hold her there like that for the present, kissing 
as children kiss; the one thought foremost in his mind, 
queerly enough, being that Chrissie Dare could hardly 
treat him as an old buffer after this; with a girl—and such 
a girl—head over ears in love with him. 

Claudia was very late home. Not only had she missed 
tea but there was really hardly time to dress for dinner; 
her face was crimson with running, her eyes bright, her 
boots thick with mud. Blagden had lent her an old deer¬ 
stalking cap; tied the flaps under her chin, kissing the 
cleft in it. She felt all fresh air and kisses; warmth and 
a pleasant chilliness combined, like the distilled essence of 
everything delightful in life, life itself. 


REPUTATION 


159 


She had taken off the cap as she entered the house, 
hushed for that last sacred quarter of an hour before 
dinner; when Miles, having already set the table, was wait¬ 
ing for the cook to dish up, with the housemaid in her 
black dress and frilled cap and apron waiting to help him 
carry in the dishes: for there was never any sort of fuss 
in the domestic arrangements at the Rectory, whatever 
there might have been elsewhere; and, indeed, there would 
have been none anywhere apart from light surface squalls, 
like that about the eggs, if only Claudia had happened to 
be born into another family. 

Luckily there was no one about to comment upon her 
hatless condition—for in those days one might as well have 
gone with one’s legs bare as one’s head—while Francie 
scarcely glanced away from the dressing-table where she 
was busy with her fringe, which seemed to have come very 
much out of curl; though, for all that, she was full of 
exclamations, an almost feverish excitement. 

“Oh, Claudia, why weren’t you in to tea? There has 
been such a fuss, and now you’re so late! There, there’s 
the gong! Wherever have you been?” 

Claudia had been right when she said she hated lies, and 
she did not know why on earth she told one then; but she 
wanted to be left alone, undisturbed in that golden mist 
which still held her, and if she retorted with, “What does 
that matter to you?” Francie would be hurt, and there 
would be more tears; so she just said the first thing that 
came into her head: “I’ve been sitting with Mrs. Hall.” 

“Oh, Claudia, Claudia, how can you?” Francie turned 
round with a face of horror which set a hundred thoughts 
flying through Claudia’s head: the chief of these being 
that someone or other must have seen her going into or 
coming out of Leesgrove Hall. 

‘ ‘ Oh, Francie! ’ ’ She mimicked her sister, for it always 
annoyed her to hear anyone say “Oh, Claudia!” like that; 
and at this Francie added very solemnly, her blue eyes wide 
and accusing: 


160 


REPUTATION 


“Why, Mrs. Hall is dead; she died at two o’clock to-day. 
Hall came up soon after tea to tell us. He said you would 
be sorry because you’d always been so kind to her; but 
you hadn’t been up there very lately and she was always 
asking for you. Oh, you couldn’t have been with Mrs. 
Hall when she’s dead, and anyhow, Hall would have known 
if you had been there; for he said that he had not been out 
to work all day, and of course he hadn’t, with his wife 
dying—and then dead. Oh, Claudia, what has come over 
you to say a thing like that—that you had been with Mrs. 
Hall when you know you hadn’t, when Mrs. Hall’s dead!” 

Francie ran on and on; once she said hopefully, as she 
was half out of the door, for the gong had sounded a 
second time: “Perhaps you really meant Mrs. Hill and 
not Mrs. Hall: that old Mrs. Hill who lives at the Ovens 
Farm.” 

But Claudia did not answer, went on dressing for din¬ 
ner as slowly as though she had not heard the gong; even 
starting to do her hair afresh; quite mechanically, for she 
was overcome by a feeling of deadly fatigue and flatness. 


CHAPTER XIII 


Claudia had an idea that she would never get over that 
shock of hearing of Mrs. Hall’s death. It seemed like a 
sort of dreadful judgment on her for the defiant way in 
which she was throwing her cap over the windmill. As 
though God might have taken away poor Hall’s wife just 
on purpose to punish her. It sounds ridiculous, hut it was 
a common enough sort of idea in those days, and known as 
a Judgment of Providence: people have said much the 
same thing within recent years, as when there were a great 
many German soldiers killed they declared that it was done 
to punish the overweening vanity of the Kaiser. 

Claudia wondered if she could ever bring herself to run 
away with Blagden now; and then wondered what she 
would find to do with herself if she did not, with the taste 
so completely gone out of everything at home. 

Next day she determined to take some flowers up to 
Hall’s cottage: “I shall know better then,” she thought 
rather confusedly; as though this might influence her one 
way or the other, like opening the Bible at random and 
putting one’s finger on a verse. Though here it was her 
own feelings that she wanted to nail down. 

She asked Francie to go with her, suddenly conscious 
that she had not been very nice to Francie lately. But 
Francie had promised to make a round of good-bye calls 
with her mother, so she could not avail herself of the in¬ 
vitation; though she hugged her sister with a gratitude 
which she would not have shown when Claudia was more 
generally and uniformly “nice.” 

Though it had not actually rained, the sky still looked wan 
from the soaking mists of the day before, and there was no 
real sunshine; just a faint gleam reflected in the puddles, 

161 


162 


REPUTATION 


emphasising the darkness of the sodden ground. There 
was no wind either; it was just another ghost of a day. 

Mrs. Hall, was a small-featured, black-haired woman. 
For a long time her face had been marred by the lines of 
pain and worry, her mouth twisted, her lips cracked, her 
eyes strained like those of some small, wild, impotent ani¬ 
mal in a trap. To-day with her eyes closed, with all the 
lines smoothed out of her face, with her lips folded in that 
quiet, wise way of dead people, she looked strangely dig¬ 
nified and apart; sufficient unto herself. 

“There must be something; there must,” thought 
Claudia. 11 That’s why animals don’t look like that when 
they’re dead; only somehow dreadful and silly, because 
they have no souls. ’ ’ 

If she ran away with Blagden and lost her soul, what 
would she look like when she was dead ? 

She was profoundly impressed and saddened. Only 
when she was out of the house and moving along the drive 
did the idea come to her that what made animals look so 
foolish when they were dead was that their mouths were 
inevitably open; everything and everyone alike looked 
ridiculous with an open mouth; and dead people might 
look every bit as bad if it were not for the precaution of 
tying up their chins. Maybe it was that white swathing 
under the chin which made nuns and sisters of mercy look 
so good and quiet and, in a way, wise. From now onward 
she would keep her own mouth tightly folded and impress 
everyone. 

She saw one magpie and was worried over it; then a little 
further on she saw a second, and this comforted her. 

Blagden had said that if it was fine, and he was no 
worse, he would meet her at half-past three in the Quarry 
wood. She was suddenly glad that Francie had not come 
with her; also that she knew in which direction she and 
her mother had gone out calling. Once again everything 
in life had swung back on to the one plane—this adventure 
with Blagden. 


REPUTATION 


163 


It was not nearly half-past three when she arrived at the 
meeting-place; though she did not mind that, for she had 
an idea that there were a lot of things she had to think 
over, make up her mind about. But as a matter of fact 
she thought of nothing; she was too excited, too full of 
shifting fancies to think. 

She had taken a mackintosh out with her for fear of rain, 
and spreading it upon the gravel, sat down on it with her 
hands clasped round her knees, weaving so many wonder¬ 
ful pictures about herself and Blagden that she was a little 
disappointed in him when he did come, wearing a great 
coat with a muffler round his throat. Though she looked 
so pretty, and altogether ridiculously young, when she 
said with great severity, “You’ll have to get rid of that 
cold before we elope. You can’t elope with a muffler on; 
everyone would think you really belonged to Leesgrove- 
cum-Leesden, ” that he was obliged to pull her to him and 
kiss her laughingly; shaking her for her impertinence, 
instead of taking pains to convince her of the complete 
insanity of any idea of elopement, which was what he had 
set himself out to do; meaning to put it like this—and it 
seemed so easy when he was away from her: “You know 
I love you a great deal too much to allow you to do a thing 
like that.” Thinking that he would speak gravely, sadly, 
of the difference in their ages, forgetful of how he hated 
Claudia to so much as hint at it. 

Next day it was raining; his cold was worse and he had 
what he looked upon as the most damnedly impertinent 
and condescending letter from “that chap Herries,” hop¬ 
ing that he was going to take the advice of people a great 
deal wiser than himself and settle down at Leesgrove as 
his wife—Herries’ mother—suggested. 

It was little wonder considering all this, that he man¬ 
aged to get his own man to intercept the skew-eyed Rec¬ 
tory boy at his dinner-hour and send a note to Claudia 
begging her to come and take pity on his loneliness. 

“I’m really ill,” he wrote, “and of course there’s not a 


164 


REPUTATION 


soul in the house who cares whether I live or die, which I 
shall do if I stay on much longer in this miserable climate. 
As to living here, I’d rather be in my grave any day. 
They all look at me in a damned insolent fashion, even 
Felton has got a sort of half-grin on his ugly fizz”—Blag- 
den had been at Eton, but that was a long while ago, and 
this was how he spelt it—“so that there’s no doubt that 
fellow Knowles has been at them already.” 

There was a postscript to this, the main part of the 
letter after, “Yours ever,” and a sort of scribble which he 
fondly imagined would be unrecognisable as his initials, 
supposing anybody intercepted it. 

“For God’s sake don’t talk to me of Italy or the South 
of France, or I’ll be hanged if I don’t pick you up in 
my arms and take you straight off there. Come to that, I 
believe that all I want on earth is to feel your dear little 
arms round my neck again.” 

He did feel them, for when Claudia arrived she was in 
one of her gentlest and kindest moods; really concerned 
about him, pouring out his tea and cosseting him up rather 
like a little girl with a large doll; so unexacting that he 
thought what a thoroughly home-loving man he might have 
been with a wife who was so easy to get on with; and how 
cruel it was to think how little one could ever see of the 
people one really cared for. Though once that thought 
pushed itself up in his mind he began asking himself, why 
not? Why should he not have the chance of happiness 
for once in his life; before it was too late, and he slipped 
down into that sort of humdrum obscurity which his son 
and his son’s mother had already prepared for him? 

Claudia, besides being sweet and good, was full of plans; 
delightful pictures into which he found himself woven so 
completely that it seemed as though he belonged there, 
and everything was as good as settled; though no one 
could have been more surprised, honestly outraged, than 
Claudia herself if anyone had suggested that it was she 
who planned, brought to a head, the whole thing. 


REPUTATION 


165 


That night Blagden awoke in a cold sweat of horror at 
the thought of what he was letting himself in for; but the 
first post brought letters from both his wife and Herries, 
and once more his mood shifted. 

Heaven knew that all he wanted was to behave decently, 
if only they would let him. But that was it; they simply 
would not let him—nagging, nagging! 

It was another wretched day, pouring with rain out of 
which Claudia emerged like a dripping rose-pink carna¬ 
tion; for wet weather suited her, bringing the colour to 
her face; and about the nape of her neck a series of en¬ 
chanting curls, which Blagden twisted in his fingers while 
she sat upon the hearthrug at his feet, knitting her brows 
over a Continental time-table, refusing to allow him to 
make his headache worse than it already was. 

She was very clever at it. Blagden, still languid from 
his cold, was amused at her cleverness. Her profile amused 
him too; it was so decided. The firm chin and the small, 
slightly aquiline nose, silhouetted out, with a delicately 
rosy outline, against the glowing fire. A rum little cus¬ 
tomer, and yet, despite that chin, so affectionate and con¬ 
fiding, so entirely in love with him. 

They would cross by day to Dieppe. Blagden had 
never crossed to Dieppe in his life, for it meant a con¬ 
foundedly long sea-passage; but as he really did not in¬ 
tend to do anything of the sort he indulgently agreed with 
all her suggestions, gasping a little when she said: “We 
can get a train from Overton Junction to Reading at a 
quarter to eight and go straight from there to Newhaven, 
catching the twelve o ’clock boat. That will save us having 
to stay a night in London.” 

She had laid down the Continental time-table for a time 
and was consulting the Bradshaw, which, at her request, 
Blagden had rung the bell and told Felton to find for 
her. It did not matter letting Felton know that she was 
looking up trains to connect with the Newhaven boat as he 
did not mean to elope, and ... Oh, confound it all, he 


166 


REPUTATION 


would not elope via Newhaven and Dieppe if he did, no 
sane person would. That’s what he thought. What Clau¬ 
dia said was: “Where’s the good of worrying about what 
servants think, or anyone else either? They’ll have to 
know sooner or later.” 

In the midst of it all she looked up with softly-glowing 
eyes and said, “I suppose if I didn’t run away with you 
I should stay on here until I ended by marrying a curate 
in sheer despair.” 

But Blagden would see himself hanged if she should 
marry a curate. He would rather—oh, much rather! run 
off with her himself. 

And that was what he did do. 

He scarcely knew why, but that’s the way in which we 
all take the really big leaps in life. Anyhow, the weather 
was beastly beyond all words. The thought of Knowles 
and Knowles’ insolence, of all that Knowles might say— 
and that was the worst of it, one never could get at the 
truth of what people said about oneself—gnawed at him 
like an aching tooth; while his wife and son had written 
again, impressing upon him the fact that his only hope, 
financially and socially, lay in remaining at Leesgrove; 
dropping into the state of a rumpty-foo country squire. 

And that was what he would do unless he made some 
sort of a move. He could not throw off his cold. If he 
did not look out they would make an old man of him be¬ 
fore he knew where he was. “Anyone would think I was 
an old buffer of sixty,” he thought indignantly; to be 
drawn up by the dreadful reflection of how very near he 
was to sixty. And he w T as perfectly honest in all this, for 
he often thought: “One might as well have a good time 
while one is young”—feeling so young that when he met 
any of his old Oxford friends he expected to find them 
looking exactly as they had done between thirty and forty 
years earlier. 

That was why it hurt him so when his wife or Herries 
alluded to his age; forcing him to face the truth, jam- 


REPUTATION 


167 


ming it up against him: therein lay the sting of Chrissie 
Dare’s vulgar and contemptuous “old trout.” Well, 
anyhow, here was someone who treated him as though he 
were not a day older than herself; someone really young, 
too, not just made up young, like Chrissie. He had not 
seriously thought of eloping; but once it was all settled 
for him he had a delightful head-in-air sort of feeling; 
was convinced that so soon as he found himself in the 
sunshine with a jolly little soul, a kind, sweet little soul, 
like Claudia Waring, he would feel a different man. 

The first ruffling breeze blew up over Pickles. Claudia 
had arranged that Blagden should meet her where the 
road to Overton was crossed by that which led to Overton 
Junction; on a Saturday—a silly day, for there were al¬ 
ways so many people about, but the only day upon which 
that particular train stopped at the Junction. 

It was a damp day and very cold. Blagden had thought 
that he would drive himself in the dogcart and leave it at 
the Junction Inn; tell them to send it back, so that no 
servants should be involved. Then he came to the con¬ 
clusion that he might as well be comfortable, and after all 
it was no good making his cold any worse than it was: 
perhaps he remembered what Claudia had said about 
eloping with a man with a cold in his head; for though he 
patronised her, indulgently, really looked upon her as a 
child, he feared her criticism; as we all do fear the criti¬ 
cism of the very young. At any rate, he had out the 
brougham and pair. 

It was a dreadful hour to get up, too early for anything 
apart from a cup of coffee, which did not really agree 
with him so early in the day. But Claudia was like that; 
it seemed as though everything she dragged him into meant 
getting up early; though after all, he might have given 
himself another five minutes in bed for she was more than 
that late, while he sat fuming, watching the coachman’s 
broad back through the glass front of the brougham; quite 
certain, though neither of them turned their heads a frac- 


168 


REPUTATION 


tion, that he and the footman were talking in whispers, 
discussing their master and his affairs, and wondering 
what they were saying. 

He himself—and it made him furious to think of it, for 
there was nothing he hated so much as giving any sort of 
explanation to a servant—had somehow felt himself driven 
into saying, when he told them to wait at the cross-roads: 
“I’ve promised to give Miss Waring a lift so that she 
may catch the early train at the Junction.” 

When Claudia did appear and the footman jumped down 
and opened the door for her, Blagden was so afraid that 
they would be late that he failed to notice Pickles until 
he felt something sawing across his legs. 

“We’ll be lucky if we don’t miss the train; jump in 
quickly. Good Lord! What have you brought that dog 
for?” 

Claudia’s hands were so full with her gloves, which 
she was carrying, her handbag, and the leash—all twisted 
up with Blagden’s legs—that she could not shake hands 
with him. As the horses moved on, however, briskly, for 
there was none too much time, she leant forward and 
kissed him out of sheer exuberant excitement. She always 
felt very well, very much alive, in the early morning and 
it was such fun eloping and so wonderful to think of going 
to the South of France, and then—after a very few days 
—on to Italy—for this was her plan. 

“I thought I’d miss the train, too; was dreadfully 
afraid: ran like the wind. I had shut Pickles in my room; 
but somehow or other he got out, trailing his leash after 
him—perhaps Clara heard him yapping and let him out. 
I wonder if she found the note. . . . Goodness gracious, 
suppose she did and they catch us up! . . . Anyhow he 
caught me up,” she laughed as though it were a good 
joke—“just past the old barn. I tried and tried to 
drive him back, but he wouldn’t go. He’d just pretend 
for a few yards—he’s as sly as an old fox, aren’t you, 
darling?—then I’d find him following at my heels; that’s 


REPUTATION 


169 


what made me so late, and in the end I had to bring him. 
Anyhow, it’s always nice to have a dog, isn’t it? One 
enjoys everything better with a dog.” 

She was looking very fresh and enchantingly pretty, 
as trim as she could be in spite of all her haste; and 
Blagden relented, thinking how her lips had felt like wet 
rose-leaves upon his cheek. 

“Oh well—but I doubt if they’ll let him into France.” 

He was angry and amused. It seemed as though Pickles, 
who was sitting between his legs panting, with his tongue 
hanging out, lent to the whole affair a standardised, almost 
domestic aspect. 

He put his arm round Claudia, drew her to him and 
enquired if she were happy. 

“Happy?” said Claudia. “Happy’s no word for it!” 
And indeed it was not, for she was fey: had, for the 
moment lost all the gloomy doubts of that transition period 
before anything was really settled. 

“And I’ve got twenty-three pounds. I only brought 
just what I wanted for the night in this silly little bag, in 
case the shops were shut when we got to Paris; anyhow, 
I can shop to-morrow. We needn’t go on to-morrow, need 
we ? I want to see Paris dreadfully; and there’s heaps of 
shopping I must do.” 

“We won’t go on a moment before you want to, my 
pet,” said Blagden fondly, “and you’ll do just whatever 
you like, now and forever. But as to twenty-three pounds, 
twenty-three pounds won’t go very far in Paris, except 
for sweeties. I must supplement that, eh?” 

Claudia stared. ‘ ‘ It seems a lot—it seems a tremendous 
lot! I had it in the Post Office Savings’ Bank at Overton, 
I’ve been saving it up for years and years; or rather 
Mama’s been saving it up for me, half of all the tips I 
ever had!” 

They caught their train, and it was lucky they did, 
for Overton Junction seemed especially built to catch the 
northeast wind and it had begun to rain. 


170 


REPUTATION 


It was pretty bad on the Newhaven packet, too, what 
with a dirty little boat and a choppy sea and no proper 
meal since the night before. Blagden was not ill, but he 
felt sleepy and sat muffled up on one of the seats while 
Claudia stood at the taffrail. About half-way over a 
thought occurred to him and he called her. As she swung 
round, buoyantly, and came to him, steadying herself with 
obvious delight to the roll of the vessel, people—dull, 
yellow-faced, muffled people—stared at her with envy; 
and indeed she was worth staring at, thought Blagden; 
though all the same, he was disturbed by the attention 
she attracted. 

“About that note,” he said; 1 ‘what was that about a 
note? The housemaid finding a note?” 

4 ‘The note I left for Mama, stuck on to my pin-cushion, 
saying . . . Oh, do look at that lovely great wave! ’ ’ 

“Saying what?” 

“That I had run away with you, of course.” 

“Oh,” said Blagden rather blankly, and there was a 
pause. He was far too much of a gentleman to be nasty 
to her about it, but ... Oh well, there were other ways, 
as he had explained before. 

“That was rather a—a—um—you know what—extreme 
sort of a step to take, wasn’t it?” 

“Oh, I don’t know,” said Claudia airily; “they’d have 
to know sooner or later, and there’s no sense in taking 
two bites at a cherry. After all, we have run away, 
haven’t we?” 

“I suppose we have—looks like it, anyhow.” 

Claudia stared at him with bright eyes, rather taken 
aback. “You’re not cross, are you? It would be dreadful 
to run away from cross people to be with a cross person. 
Or is it your cold ? You do look rather queer, ’ ’ she added; 
so hardly that Blagden was hurt, put out one hand and 
touched hers. 

“You would not speak like that if you loved me; and 
after all, it was you I was thinking of,” he said. 


REPUTAT10 N 


171 


“I do love you, I do, I do!” In a moment she was 
repentant. What on earth was the matter with her ? Was 
she going to be a pig and turn round upon him like all 
those other people, that glacial wife of his, just when he 
was so unwell, and not—oh, unmistakably, not so young 
as he used to be? 

She sat down upon the seat at his side and snuggled 
up to him; thrilling him with her nearness, the thought of 
what lay before them—and how gentle he would be with 
her, the little darling—until some idiot of a woman re¬ 
marked, in a voice borne to him by the strong head wind: 
“Look at those two! Isn’t it pretty? Really, I do think 
there’s no sweeter relationship than that between a father 
and daughter,” which altogether upset him; though 
fortunately Claudia seemed to be asleep, or half asleep 
with her cheek against his shoulder. 

By the time they reached Dieppe the weather had cleared 
and the sun was out, while the landing authorities made 
no fuss about Pickles—at least, they ceased to make a fuss 
so soon as they were tipped, for people were allowed their 
own way more in those days—and Blagden, himself, felt 
very much better after a good lunch and several glasses 
of port wine; though still sleepy, so sleepy that he dropped 
off very soon after they had started. 

As for Claudia, she sat with her dog on her knee— 
having pulled herself away from Blagden’s rather port- 
winey embraces, with a slight sense of disgust—trying not 
to look at him, staring out of the window; thinking a great 
deal more than was, perhaps, altogether wise. And then, 
characteristically enough, turning her head again and 
deliberately staring at him; reading him over in the sort 
of way in which one reads and criticises a book which one 
has only just skimmed through, drawn on by a sense of 
exhilaration, feeling as though one might have almost 
written it oneself, with no great idea of the style, caring 
only for the plot. 


CHAPTER XIV 


It was raining and sleeting in turns as Claudia got out 
of the train at Overton Junction five days later. The fire 
in the general waiting-room presenting nothing more to the 
outward eyes than a dense mass of greyish-black slack, 
emitted great puffs of acrid smoke, all out of nothing, as 
it were, and her eyes were smarting with it. There had 
been a sheep and cattle fair at Upper Seton, and the 
station was packed with farmers and drovers, their wet 
coats reeking with the mingled smell of beasts and men. 

When the local train squeaked and banged and clattered 
into the station there was an immediate rush for the car¬ 
riages, which were overcrowded: with men standing and 
smoking; with women burdened with large, sharp-cornered 
baskets which, it seemed, that they would not leave hold of 
for a minute; with fidgeting children with red noses and 
faces, wet muddy boots; with bulging sacks and packages 
of every sort and shape. 

The two first-class compartments were as crowded as 
any, and Claudia could not get into them; the others, 
divided to a height of but little above the head-line, were 
rank as foul stables, what with tobacco, corduroy and one 
thing and another; with wet fowls clucking in wet baskets, 
and shaggy, wet-coated sheep-dogs, casting a mild gaze 
of contempt upon Pickles, vibrating like an electric wire 
upon his mistress’s knee. 

As the train shook its way into Overton, Claudia— 
propelled out of it by the crowd, with no more choice than 
if she had been part of the discharge from a waste-pipe— 
stood for a minute or two, bewildered by sheer physical 
fatigue; bumped and pushed this way and that; overcome 

172 


REPUTATION 


173 


by a feeling of savage helplessness, inability to grapple with 
the overwhelming mass of humanity, burly shoulders, 
sharp elbows, banging baskets; clasping Pickles in her 
arms in case he should be trodden underfoot. 

More than all else she was struck by the absence of 
Fountain, the old coachman, who had always been on the 
platform, touching his hat, smiling; leaving his horses in 
the charge of the man with the luggage-cart so that he 
might be the first to greet any returning member of 
the family. And, indeed, they had generally both gone 
away and returned in what Claudia had described as 
“clots”: to Broadstairs for the sea-air, or up to London— 
a rare treat this!—to be present at the marriage of one of 
the many cousins: Warings or Mannerings, Prestons or 
Fieldens, or Hebbertons. 

The absence of Fountain’s clean-shaven, darkish, 
plum-coloured countenance was not a mere lack, it was 
something definite, like a blow in the face: a symbol of 
change. 

She had lost her suit-case somehow or other on the 
boat, and had not minded; half triumphing in the fact that 
everything connected with that unfortunate, that ridiculous 
adventure was left behind her. And, after all, it had 
contained nothing of any value, for she had been told 
that she would have a complete new outfit in Paris, had 
planned it all in a delirious sort of way in her head; first 
and foremost a black evening gown, with a vast and billow¬ 
ing skirt, immense, mysterious puffs like storm-clouds of 
black tulle, and a small velvet bodice well off the shoulder 
—not at all the sort of thing for a girl of only just 
eighteen. But then, she would not have been a girl at 
all; would have been, in the eyes of God,—so strangely 
diverse to those of “really nice people” in such affairs— 
Lord Blagden’s wife. 

Anyhow, she had no luggage to bother about now, and 
stood on the wind-, rain-, sleet-swept platform until the 
crowd should have dispersed; with that sort of stolid 


174 


REPUTATION 


composure and absence of all thought and speculation which 
comes to one at times of devastating fatigue. 

For a moment or so she wondered whether she would go 
out to Leesden in the so-called bus—half wagonette, half 
carrier’s cart—which ran to and fro from the station, and 
decided against it. For though it was cheaper, it would be 
horribly crowded; and, after all, the flys went down in 
her father’s bills. She thought of that, too, with that odd 
mixture of the fantastic and the practical which had always 
distinguished her. No, no! directly people had moved on 
a little bit she would walk up to “The George,” and order 
a fly. 

She was the last to leave the station; and the station- 
master, who was taking the tickets so that both porters 
might be free for the luggage, milk-cans and live stock, 
stared at her curiously. 

“Why, miss, isn’t Mr. Fountain here to meet you? Oh 
dear, oh dear, no cab or nothing! One minute, miss, and 
I ’ll send one of the lads up to ‘ The George ’; there’s a nice 
fire in the waiting-room. It isn’t fit for any young lady 
to be out in weather like this, and all the rough people 
there are about, too.” 

The proud thought came to Claudia—yes, even then— 
how surprised he would be if she were to tell him that she 
had crossed the sea alone, and in a crowd compared to 
which this was a mere nothing. But all she said was: 
“Thank you, Mr. Spurling, but I’d rather walk up, and 
I haven’t got any luggage.” 

She walked away, with her head in the air, without so 
much as an umbrella—the last thing one would remember 
in eloping—Pickles shivering at her heels. 

At the turn from the station-drive she glanced back and 
was furious with herself for doing so; for the station- 
master and another man, a Leesgrove farmer whom they all 
disliked, a man with a foxy-red face and insolent, peering 
eyes, were staring after her, talking together. 

She was as sure that they were whispering as if she 


REPUTATION 


175 


could actually hear the sibilant hiss of whispers—beastly 
whispers! She had always hated people who whispered, 
and a wave of heat swept over her, as though someone 
had suddenly opened an oven door straight in her face. 
What were they saying—what could they be saying? No 
one had seen her going away with Lord Blagden, why 
shouldn’t she have gone for a little visit to one of her 
relations, on her own account, left her luggage to follow 
behind her: lost it, as indeed she had done; or been over 
to the junction or up to Oxford for the day? 

She would have liked to go back and ask them what 
they were saying. She was overcome with shame and rage 
and amazement at the very idea of people who ought to 
be, who always had been, subservient, whispering after 
her. She had noticed something different in Spur ling’s 
glance, too; for though he spoke civilly enough, he had 
looked her up and down, pretending to rake the platform 
for the porters, but raking her, furtively, in between- 
whiles. 

She walked up the hill to the town, with the blood pound¬ 
ing in her head so that she could scarcely see or hear, so 
fast that she had no breath to spare when she reached the 
top. 

The sloping, open market-place was almost deserted; 
the few lamps already lighted isolated like balls of yellow 
mist in the damp air, the chill of which struck home to 
the bone. 

A couple of women, whom she did not so much as know 
by sight, came out of Fry’s, the draper, rounding a stack 
of linoleum at the door, almost running into her, drawing 
back, apologising. 

4 ‘Why, if that ain’t the very one!” she heard one of 
them exclaim in a shrill half-whisper, almost before she 
was past; while she felt, actually felt, their eyes in her 
back shooting forth amazement. Wasn’t there something 
like that in the Bible?—“The very one!” What did they 
mean by that? How did they dare to speak like that? 


176 


REPUTATION 


Why, she didn’t even know who they were; did not know 
them from Adam. It seemed to be that fact which struck 
her more than anything else. 

Pjckles was so close about her feet that she could 
scarcely walk. He was cold and wet and tired, and had 
not had any proper meals; apart from this he was be¬ 
wildered, and nothing upsets a dog so much as not to 
understand what is going on; to be dragged here and there 
amid crowds with strange smells and inconsiderate feet. 
But it seemed to Claudia as though he were ashamed, 
slinking like that; and she gave him a little kick, with a 
sharp, “Oh, get out!” which only increased his bewilder¬ 
ment. 

There was no one in the long stable-yard of “The 
George”—which seemed asleep like the rest of the town. 
When the ostler did at last appear, in answer to the bell, 
coming up from the bar smelling vilely of beer, he seemed 
half dazed: peering through the gloom, enquiring who it 
was; raising his lantern to Claudia’s face, and answering 
his own question. “E—e—eh, now, if it ain’t little Miss 
Waring?” 

Upon receiving her order for a fly, and as quickly as 
possible, he asked her if she would not wait in the parlour 
where there was a fire. But, wet and cold as she might 
be, Claudia preferred to stay where she was. Quite sud¬ 
denly her courage was giving way; or rather, that sort of 
conceit or want of imagination which had made it impos¬ 
sible for her to believe that anyone could think ill of her, 
more especially “common people,” was collapsing. The 
worst of it all was that she did not know what they thought 
—what they had said. What did “these sort of people” 
find to say? What, or how much, they accused her of; 
how, or whether, they knew anything at all. Totally 
ignorant of the percolating qualities of any sort of gossip 
—above all, never, never applying even so much as she knew 
to herself—this alone surprised her more than anything had 
ever done before. She had always been “one of the young 



REPUTATION 


177 


ladies,” and this fact in itself had been like a wall en¬ 
closing her, cutting her off from all criticism apart from 
that of her own people. 

The wall was down now, but only in part: never, 
never—and mercifully enough to the end of her life— 
completely down; though sufficiently loop-holed—and again 
mercifully—for others to look in, criticise; for her, her¬ 
self, to look out, catch the lie of the human mind. 

Anyhow, she preferred to keep out of the way of any 
more surprised and enquiring faces just then; and prop¬ 
ping herself against a post of the open-fronted coach¬ 
house, watched the fly being dragged out and put ready; 
the ancient ostler shuffling to and fro, in and out of the 
stable and harness-room; tut-tutting to himself, whistling 
between his teeth; while she stood first upon one foot, then 
upon the other, trying to keep the one not in actual use 
warmed by tucking it up under her skirts. 

It seemed as though the man would never be ready. 
Surely no one in the whole world had ever taken so long 
harnessing a horse. As she herself darted forward to 
lift the shafts while he backed the horse between them, 
he gave her a surprised glance, his mouth dropping open, 
as though he had not, up to that very moment, believed 
her altogether real. She heard him mutter, at the off side 
of the old grey horse, which smelt as though it had been 
kept in a frowsty cupboard with frowsty apples, 4 ‘Well, 
I’m danged!” as he fumbled with the breeching. 

Even then he was not ready, muttering something 
about “fetching me coat,” something to the effect that it 
was “more nor two greatcoats colder than yester night,” 
and shambled off down the yard. 

He was a long time gone. Pickles had forsaken her 
and disappeared in his wake. The old horse stood motion¬ 
less, leaning forward on legs which looked as though they 
had been carelessly stuffed with straw and pebbles. It had 
stopped sleeting, but the rain fell steadily in a depressed 
sort of way, with no force or spirit in it. 


178 


REPUTATION 


Far below where Claudia stood the long lane of a yard 
was crossed by a wide beam of light from the bar. For 
the rest it was all darkness and damp. Nothing looked 
altogether real. It seemed as though the ostler never 
could, or would, return; that nothing could ever happen 
again. If one crossed to the other world by a cab in the 
place of a boat, it would be a horse such as this—standing 
here in despondent patience; waiting—waiting—waiting 
for what? She had half forgotten, for once there seemed 
nothing left of herself, no sort of objective before her— 
that would drag it. 

Quite suddenly Claudia pulled herself together, jerked 
herself free of the morass of brooding half-thoughts into 
which she had sunk. After all, why should she be kept 
waiting like this? What on earth did it matter to people 
like the ancient ostler where she had been, what she had 
done—or had not done? After all, Blagden had thought 
her of importance—tremendous importance! She had 
ordered a fly, and she would have it; what were they there 
for excepting to w r ait upon her and people like her ? 

She put up her hand to the bell, hanging just above her 
head, and jerked it savagely. 

In a moment the light from the bar door widened. 
The ostler came running out, struggling into his coat, en¬ 
tangled with his whip. She could see a distorted moon 
of yellow light between his bandy legs. Other people came 
to the door: a stout woman floundered after the ostler— 
transformed into a coachman by his coat; while a small 
boy followed with an ancient top-hat. 

Mrs. Shanklin, the landlady, had a rug over one arm. 
“I thought you might be cold, miss,” she panted, peering 
at Claudia through the flickering light, while the man and 
boy lit the lamps of the fly. 

Claudia accepted the rug with dignity. “Thank you, 
Mrs. Shanklin. Yes, it is cold; and I lost my bag and 
rug crossing over from France.” 

She could not have told anyone what on earth made her 


REPUTATION 


179 


say that. Her voice, as she thanked the landlady, sounded, 
in her own ears, like her father’s—pompous and con¬ 
descending, and quite kind; then came that * ‘ crossing over 
from France.” It was out before she knew it; not be¬ 
cause she had to tell what she had done—no one could keep 
a secret better than Claudia; once she really got hold 
of it, it grew like the old man of the sea: grew until it 
possessed her, until she got to a state where it was sheer 
agony, with the most stupendous effort needed, to reveal it 
—but because she was so childishly proud of the mere fact 
of having been to France. 

‘‘Lor’ now!” exclaimed the landlady, ‘ 1 that’s a long 
way, ain’t it now? Further nor Manchester.” 

Claudia was actually in the fly, no longer wretched 
but arrogant, upheld by a sort of bursting pride, when it 
was found that Pickles was missing. And this alone shows 
what a state of quite sudden exhilaration, of being alto¬ 
gether above herself, a true “don’t-eare-a-damn” state she 
had worked herself into, not to have desired the continued 
comfort of her dog’s presence. The worst of it was that 
the general searching, whistling and bawling for Pickles 
was something in which everybody thought it necessary to 
take a part; giving the loungers from the bar the excuse to 
surround the fly, even opening the door and peering in, 
as though he could be hidden away under Claudia’s legs 
without her feeling him there. Everyone seemed to have 
seen a “doorg,” be “darnged” if they hadn’t 4 ‘ seen a 
doorg, ” but it was a long time before he was produced 
—hauled from out the kitchen by the scruff of his neck, 
with a bone still in his mouth. 

“You cur!” ejaculated Claudia, as he was thrown in 
to her; and for the second time that evening—the second 
time in all their lives together—she kicked him. 

As the old man clambered on to the box and gathered 
up the reins, just as they were ready to drive off, and there 
was as yet no sound of wheels to deaden the words, some¬ 
one shouted out in a laughing, drunken bellow: 


180 


REPUTATION 


“ ’Ope yer left ’is lordship well?” 

It was shooed down as the clumsy conveyance moved 
forward, lurching and grinding over the stones. But 
Claudia had heard it. It had actually been said. 

“If it hadn’t been for you—oh, if it hadn’t been for you 
—you little beast you! ’ ’ she cried to Pickles; for, indeed, 
if it had not been for that delay they would have got away 
without anyone else seeing them, with no chance for any¬ 
one to hit her that foul, that horrible blow. 

“Oh, Pickles, Pickles!” she upbraided him; but all 
the same she lifted him in her arms, wet and muddy as he 
was, pressed the side of her face to his; for, after all, 
she loved him, and he loved her, and it had been too awful 
—altogether too awful. The strange part of it all was that 
she could not really believe it was true, any more true than 
a dream that is past. 

And that’s what it all was—a ludicrously impossible 
dream of having run away with a man who had a wife of 
his own. Why, to begin with, it wasn’t the sort of thing 
that any girl in her senses would do. 

The whole affair was so altogether over and done with 
that it did not seem to belong to Claudia Waring—to her 
own everyday life—in the very faintest degree. Besides, 
it wasn’t what people seemed to think—horrid, low, dirty- 
minded people—it wasn’t, it wasn’t! 

11 The beasts! The beasts! ’ ’ she sobbed, and, for the first 
time since she left home, broke into tears, which Pickles 
licked from her face with a warm tongue smelling of 
mutton. 

After a minute or two, as she ceased to caress him, he 
slipped to the straw at her feet and found his bone; while 
Claudia prised herself back in one corner of the frowsty 
vehicle which went pounding and bumping over the one 
long cobbled street of the little town, and up the still 
longer hill which led out of it; and then, turning, lurched 
off along the muddy and ill-repaired road which led to 
Leesden. 


REPUTATION 


181 


Claudia’s one thought now was to get home. One sup¬ 
poses that she was not more dense than most girls, while 
she had certainly never formulated any high-souled ideal 
of that home, her home life, her own people. If the truth 
were to be told, indeed, she looked on them as being more 
narrow-minded than anyone outside that particular district 
could possibly be—narrow-minded, old-fashioned, and very 
much down on everyone who was not exactly the same as 
themselves. In fact, she regarded them in the way that 
every fresh generation does regard the generation im¬ 
mediately preceding it; as being, what Lord Blagden would 
have described as altogether “rumpty foo,” and no mis¬ 
take about it either. 

Added to this, she had very often—most often, indeed 
—been in a state of disgrace, over one thing or another: 
for it seemed that they approved of her as little as she 
approved of them. There had been one crowning im¬ 
pertinence on her part when her mother had reminded her 
that girls did not behave like that in her young days, and 
she had answered back: “Ah, but you were then and I’m 
now,” and was proud of the pertness of the retort; know¬ 
ing that her mother quoted her, fell back upon her sharp¬ 
ness when she could find nothing scathing of her own to 
say; and she was never scathing—as Granny could be, so 
often was—merely shocked, disapproving. 

All the same, they were her own people; it was they 
and not the house which made home, or so she thought; 
though she loved the house, loved the very smell of it; 
agonised over it, in the end, far more than she agonised 
over the people in it. For one can replace people, but one 
can never replace one’s first home, all it knows of one, all 
we have told it; the places we hid in when we wanted 
to be alone—the secret places; the smell of apples in ouv 
own special cupboards, at the back of our own special 
drawers; the chill touch of the shining chintz of the 
drawing-room sofa, when one had a headache and was 
allowed to lie down on it; the window-seats; the views 


182 


REPUTATION 


from the windows, immemorially framed for us alone. 

It is all as near to oneself as one’s own skin. One can 
be, and often is, most desperately bored with it, longing 
to get out of it, as Sydney Smith longed to get out of his 
skin—* ‘sit in his bones.” But all the same one cannot 
imagine it as turning against one, drawing itself away, 
leaving one stripped, naked and sore to the world; any 
more than one can imagine one’s own skin behaving in the 
same fashion as that of a snake. 

And here we have the whole reason for the prodigal’s 
return: he is so insanely certain of that one place in the 
world. “If only I can get home, it will be all right”; 
that’s what he says. Just as the dying exile says: “If 
once I can get back to my own home, my own people, again 
they’ll understand,” knowing perfectly well—yet seem¬ 
ingly incapable of applying the knowledge—that, of all 
the people in the world, one’s own people are the very last 
to understand, to sympathise; realising it quite plainly in 
connection with others, too, saying: “He had better not 
show his nose at home”; “Rather a shame of him coming 
back on the old people like that; might at least have had 
the decency to have kept away.” Or yet again: “Only 
imagine going back there where everyone knows him! 
Of all silly things to do! ” 

They said this of Claudia Waring. Of course they said 
it, for she had behaved—well, to say the least of it, out¬ 
rageously ; while Claudia herself was not such a simpleton 
as not to have realised it in regard to anyone else. 

As it was, of course, she felt guilty; but, upon my word, 

I do not believe that she felt any more seriously or ir¬ 
reparably guilty than if she had broken the jug of the 
toilet set in the best spare bedroom. And, oddly enough, 
it was rather like that; it was not only herself—she had 
spoiled the set. They would all—her father and mother, 
her brother and sisters, more especially her unmarried 
sisters—suffer from what she had done, though far less 
than anyone expected. For, sad to say, though no amount 


REPUTATION 


183 


of mere negative righteousness, of doing exactly what 
everyone else does, has ever lent any sort of glamour to any 
family there is something about the “one sinner’’—which 
catches the eyes, apparently, of both worlds. 

She had done an awful thing; without doubt she had 
done an awful thing, and there would be a row. She 
must have realised this, for as she opened the hall door 
and came into the hall, warm and glowing with its stove, 
its one large hanging lamp; smelling faintly of furniture 
polish and dogskin gloves, as it always did—most strangely 
unchanged after what seemed like years and years—she 
looked at the clock, and seeing that it was seven o’clock, 
snatched Pickles up in her arms, to keep his muddy paws 
from the carpet, and ran upstairs as quickly and quietly as 
possible almost furtively; if—oh, yes, and despite all if 
—Claudia Waring could do anything that might be called 
furtive; thinking that once she got her dog away out of 
sight, got herself washed and changed, all very specially 
fresh and neat for dinner, she might, in some measure, 
be able to smooth things over. For she still retained her 
complete belief in her power to do this, as she always 
had done, once she set her mind, bent her pride to it. 

To her surprise, the blinds in her bedroom were not 
yet down; the window still open, with the misty rain beat¬ 
ing into it. With some difficulty, for it all seemed to have 
been amazingly tidied, rearranged, she found some matches 
and lit a candle; then stood staring at her room, the 
room she shared with Francie. 

Both beds, hers and Francie’s, were what the house¬ 
maids call “stripped”; that is, the sheets and pillow-cases 
had gone, while the blankets were neatly folded in a 
pile in the middle of each, covered with a checked dust- 
cloth. 

She could never, never put into words the effect which 
this had upon her. It was, indeed, as though she herself 
had been stripped; as though she had been carried away 
dead and come back, an unexpected and unwanted ghost, 


184 


REPUTATION 


to a place which knew her no more; turning upon her a 
face of utter blankness. 

After a moment or so she recovered herself sufficiently 
to raise her candle in her hand and look round her. There 
was nothing on the dressing-table, absolutely nothing, apart 
from a china tray and two empty candlesticks—no shoes 
or boots under it; nothing on the mantelshelf, on the little 
tables at the sides of the beds. She opened one of the 
drawers and looked into it; it was perfectly clean and 
empty; so was the wardrobe. 

“Why, it looks like a spare room,” she said to herself in 
a horrified whisper; with Pickles cowering against her legs, 
his sensitive consciousness, his dog’s soul, overcome by 
something strange in the room, the absence of so much as 
a single shoe to worry. 

The house seemed more completely still than Claudia 
had ever known it before. What had happened? Was 
everyone dead ? Had everyone gone away ? Had she 
been absent as long as all that, returning like Rip van 
Winkle to an alien—or worse, far worse—an entirely empty 
world ? 

The door opened quite suddenly, startling her so that 
her heart pounded with alarm: and this in itself added 
to her sense of strangeness. For why in the world should 
she be so frightened by someone coming into her room? 
Or was it only because of that silence? Was it as real as 
all that—the believing that everyone was dead? 

“Oh, Clara,” her tone, high with relief, sounded odd in 
her own ears, “how you startled me! What in the world 
has happened?” 

“Miss Claudia! . . . Miss Claudia!” It seemed as 
though the girl had no language beyond that; while she 
also raised her candle, and moved across the room in an 
odd, hesitating way, staring at Claudia as though to make 
certain of her—“Miss Claudia?” 

“What in the world’s the matter? Have you gone 
stark, staring mad, Clara? Where are all my things? 


REPUTATION 


185 


Where are Miss Francie’s—Mrs. Stevens’, things? What 
on earth-” She broke off in sheer despair. 

“Mrs. Stevens has gone away—gone to join Mr. Stevens 
—she always was going to sail on the twenty-first—yester¬ 
day—don’t you remember, miss?” Clara spoke stiffly, 
mechanically, as though her thoughts were elsewhere, no 
longer staring at Claudia, glancing uneasily enough from 
side to side. “She went off down to Southampton the day 
before—Monday—the missus was going with her; but Lady 
Mannering came here and went with her instead.” 

Lady Mannering was one of the aunts—Mr. Waring’s 
sister; very managing and very much disliked by all of 
them, including Granny. 

“Why on earth should Aunt Eleanor-?” 

“Missus not liking to be away . . . because the upset 
an’ all,” continued Clara, and turned with a scurrying 
whisk of her skirts. “I’ll get you your hot water, miss.” 

She was half out of the door—it seemed, indeed, as 
though she did not like being left alone with Claudia, as 
though there were something strange and uncanny about 
her—when Claudia ran to her and caught at her arm. 

“What do you mean, how do you mean—all this 'up¬ 
set’?” she cried; fighting down, pressing back behind her 
an almost overwhelming sense of her own dreadful failure, 
base ingratitude, want of feeling, inhumanity in all matters 
of human relationships—to have forgotten the date of 
Francie’s departure—there had been no packing done m 
their common bedroom, on account of there being no space, 
but in the old nursery—"If I had seen the boxes,” thought 
Claudia; but all the while she knew that nothing would 
have made any difference—nothing, nothing! She had for¬ 
gotten, completely forgotten, her beloved, her almost own 
child—Francie!—had actually, and that’s what it came to, 
lost sight of the very fact that she was going; that she was 
losing her, perhaps for ever, in her own blind infatuation. 

And, after all, it never was altogether that—really and 
truly an infatuation. Something at the back of her saw 



186 


REPUTATION 


through everything to do with herself—and to do with 
herself alone—too plainly for her to believe this. Oh, that 
was the worst of it—the most infamous part of it all! 
In her secret heart she knew that she had never lost that 
sense of criticism, scoffing. Oh, she was hopeless, hopeless, 
in connection with everyone—everyone apart from herself, 
even with Blagden; with this first love affair, over which 
she had been so amazingly greedy. Yes, that was it— 
greedy; seated at the table of life, snatching at everything, 
cramming her own mouth, absolutely regardless of every¬ 
one else. She remembered now, how she had noticed— 
but only to be irritated by the fact—that Francie had 
been increasingly busy in her rather flustered and help¬ 
less flitting, moth-like way, during those last few days; 
more anxious than ever to attract her sister’s attention, to 
win from her some signs of interest; some realisation of the 
fact that she, Francie, was for once the important one; to 
win pity, caresses, endearments, all those outward and 
visible signs of affection which were so irresistibly dear 
to her. And Claudia had just gone on and on and on; 
oblivious of all this; knowing it and yet oblivious of it; 
like a pig with its nose in its own trough, its own foul 
litter. 

And now Francie was gone—was gone! The thought of 
it echoed through her like a voice through an empty room. 
Of course, she could write to her; but what were letters? 
Yes, what were letters, save the most fatal source of irrita¬ 
tion, of misunderstanding, that it was possible to imagine ? 
She knew it then, with one of those clear flashes of intui¬ 
tion which came to her at times—only at times, more’s the 
pity, and generally too late. In after years when she 
could put everything else into words, supremely well, too; 
words which could make visible men and women, and 
children—and this last is the most difficult of all—who 
had no sort of life apart from what she herself, with her 
own pen, gave them, she realised this more and more: the 
hopeless futility of letters in connection with the people we 


REPUTATION 


187 


love; the dreadful danger of letters to, or concerning, the 
people we dislike, even ever so mildly, making mild jokes 
about them. The Letter as that sort of fire which will 
never really warm, and with which it is, yet, dangerous— 
nay, fatal—to play. 

She awoke from her thoughts of Francie, thoughts like 
dark, quickly-passing and yet overwhelming, waves, at the 
sound of Clara’s voice. “Please, Miss, I must go; there’s 
all the hot water to be taken round an’ all.” 

* ‘ But how do you mean—what upset ? ’ ’ Claudia picked 
up the girl’s former words as though there had been noth¬ 
ing whatever going on in her own mind since they were 
spoken, in truth no more than a moment before. 

“Being so upset about you an’ all, miss.” Clara’s 
voice was reproachful. ‘ ‘ I always said as how Miss 
Claudia hadn’t got no heart,” she remarked in the kitchen 
later on, when cook had finished her dishing-up: telling 
them all about it; and how anyone could have knocked 
her down with a feather upon going into that room and 
finding Miss Claudia there: wondering what would be done 
to the “likes” of her in a case like that: “An’ the missus 
always so down on us girls an’ all.” 

“And the master being gone off to France,” she added 
now, with her eyes like hare’s, always so foolishly pro¬ 
tuberant, looking everywhere save at Claudia. “Please, 
miss, I must go.” She actually took her own fingers to 
loosen her young lady’s rigidly-mechanical nip upon her 
black alpaca sleeve. “An’ dinner isn’t not until a quarter- 
past eight.” 

“A quarter-past eight!” There was something which 
would have struck any stranger as ludicrously dispropor¬ 
tionate in Claudia’s tone of almost horrified amazement; 
her look of being once more—and if possible more than 
ever—utterly taken aback at this piece of news. Though 
if you can remember the sound of the dinner-gong at seven- 
thirty on week-days, the supper-gong at eight on Sundays, 
ever since you can remember anything, any such change in 


188 


REPUTATION 


the order of such things does seem like a revolution; and 
it is indeed a conglomeration of such things which makes a 
revolution. She even found herself wondering if it could 
be Sunday; discarding this idea because there were no 
trains to or from Overton on a Sunday. 

“On account of the master coming back by the last 
train/’ added Clara, and escaped, running like the wind, 
to fetch the hot water; to tell everyone that there was 
Miss Claudia up in what used to be her room, her’s and 
Miss Francie’s, if it wasn’t a ghost. 


CHAPTER XV 


Left alone, Claudia stood perfectly still in front of the 
door which Clara had swiftly, yet silently, closed behind 
her—for Mrs. Waring’s calm, methodical training stood 
by her servants, even in moments of the greatest agita¬ 
tion; so that none of them were ever known to smile 
when they were waiting at table, to drop anything, to say 
“Oh, lor’! ” in front of anyone—staring before her, with 
a feeling as though everything in her had ceased to work, 
as though she were turned to stone; if she could have 
gathered up spirit or interest enough to feel her pulse, she 
would have been surprised to find it still beating. 

Francie had gone; altogether and irrevocably gone! 
And it was not that she, Claudia, had forgotten that she 
was going; rather that she had, throughout all those mad 
weeks, absolutely and completely lost all sense of time; 
dates standing for less than nothing, non-existent. Francie 
might have shrieked in her ear that she was leaving on the 
twenty-first, in place of weeping over the fact—silently, 
in a gentle, leaking sort of way, as she had done—and it 
would have meant nothing, nothing whatever. If she had 
said ‘‘ to-morrow,’’ or even ‘‘next Monday,” or “Monday 
week,” coming to it as closely and definitely as all that, 
Claudia might have realised what it meant. But I doubt 
it; for it was her fatal way to keep her eyes fixed upon one 
egg in one basket; remaining oblivious of all else for the 
time being. In after years she conquered this habit to a 
certain extent, but only by means of continuous effort; 
if she stopped thinking for so much as a day—“Now this 
is one of the things that I must not do,” off she went. 

And now-! Francie gone and her father coming 

189 


190 REPUTATION 

back from France—from France! Was the world coming 
to an end? 

Having stood for quite a long time staring at the door 
with the feeling of never having before realised that door- 
panels were shaped and arranged in that particular, and, 
as it seemed, peculiar fashion, she went slowly round the 
room, staring at everything in it; touching it curiously as 
though the few, dull articles of furniture, the sort of 
furniture considered quite good enough for a girl’s room, 
were people quite inexplicably turned into things. At 
last she sat down on what used to be her own bed, very 
upright; and in the most uncomfortable fashion, as Pickles 
found when he jumped up, slithered off again; and then, 
with a lack of persistence alien to his nature, curled him¬ 
self up on the floor at her feet. 

The door opened once more, and once more Claudia 
jumped. She was unaware of the modern application of 
the word “nerves,” but it was plain that there was some¬ 
thing wrong with her. 

‘ ‘ Oh, Mama! ’ ’ she cried; and then laughed rather sillily, 
or so it sounded to herself. “How you startled me!” 

She had slid to her feet, but she did not put out her 
cheek to be kissed because she knew that she had done 
wrong; that she was in for the most awful wigging. And 
yet, with all this the words of the lounger from the bar 
had no sort of connection. It seemed perfectly impossible 
that her own people could ever really think ill of her, in 
the outside sense of the word. 

“I hope you weren’t worried. I’m most frightfully 

sorry. I-” she was beginning—and remembered that 

this was a great deal to her—then broke off; cheeked by 
a sense of something incomprehensibly chilling and stony 
in her mother’s expression: for she looked at her, not only 
as if she bore no sort of relationship to her, but as if 
she had never seen her before, did not really see her then, 
as an individual, that is. 

“Your father will be back in half an hour; he will see 



REPUTATION 


191 


you after he has had his dinner. You are not to go out 
of your room or speak to anyone; remember that. Nanny 
will bring you up something to eat and make your bed— 
for to-night.’’ 

That was all. It seemed that there must be a great 
deal more coming. Even as Mrs. Waring turned and 
moved towards the door, it seemed certain that there must 
be a great deal more coming; that she would at least turn 
round and scold her daughter in some sort of fashion; 
reproaching her, appealing to her better feelings, to what 
ought to be expected from a clergyman’s daughter, but 
there was nothing, nothing. Just those few words, like 
drops from an icicle, that amazing “for to-night”: then the 
door opened and shut again upon Mrs. Waring’s broad, 
matronly back, with that unchanging fold in the black 
satin, running across from under either arm; and once 
more Claudia found herself staring at those strange, those 
symbolical panels, without so much as a dressing-gown 
hanging upon them! After all, the thought came to her 
with that incongruous clearness with which things that 
don’t matter in the very least do come to one at such 
moments; it was this which made the door look so queer— 
the fact that there were no dressing-gowns hanging upon 
it. 

After some time she heard the sound of wheels, the 
opening of the front door, a general subdued stir, the 
hum of voices; her father’s boom, crushed down as though 
someone had sat on it, followed by a long silence, brought 
to an end by the clamour of the gong. 

Even then it was some time before anyone appeared. 
Claudia had had no tea, and nothing more than sandwiches 
for lunch; her clothes were damp, and she was shivering 
from head to foot with a feeling as though she had been 
dipped in ice-cold water. 

“At any rate, I might as well take off my boots,” she 
thought, with a sudden pulling of herself together, a 
return to her old practical ways. She had unlaced one 


192 


REPUTATION 


boot and half undone the other when Nanny came in with 
a tray and put it down on the table at her bedside. 

Old nurses are invariably supposed to be kind, beam¬ 
ing, stout, motherly and more or less fools. The Rectory 
Nanny was nothing of the kind: thin and spare, with a 
mouth like a rat-trap, she was a person whom there was, 
absolutely, no hope of humbugging. The young Warings 
had, however, never associated any sort of tenderness with 
the word “Nanny,” and therefore they did not expect 
it. For the rest, she was one of the most competent people 
who ever lived, and they realised this: a person who knew 
exactly what to do in illness; a person who never got 
flustered or lost her head; a person with whom one always 
knew exactly where one was, where everything else was. 
If she had one weakness, if she ever showed the slightest 
sign of unbending, it was with Piers, whom she called 
‘ 1 that limb ’’; Piers who had been known to kiss her! She 
herself never kissed anyone. 

“Hullo, Nanny!” said Claudia; then, as Nanny did 
not answer, she kicked off her remaining boot, sending it 
flying across the room, and added: “I suppose I may have 
my slippers.” 

Still without a word, Nanny turned and went out of 
the room. Claudia had an idea that she would not come 
back; but just as she finished wolfing up her hot soup, 
meat and vegetables—trying to leave a little, feeling as 
though she ought to be too overcome by her own enormities 
to eat like that; putting aside a certain portion, and then 
unable to resist it; breaking into it and into it, until it 
was all gone, leaving no more than a bone for Pickles, who 
was sitting up in front of her, still reeking with “The 
George” mutton—the old woman, with her smooth black 
front, tight knob of grey hair at the back of her head, and 
deep-set, unsmiling eyes, came back into the room with a 
pair of slippers and night-gown and dressing-gown in 
her hand. 

As she laid them on the bed and raised the tray, Claudia 


REPUTATION 


193 


said: “But they’re not mine. "Where are mine?” adding 
defiantly: “And aren’t I going to have any pudding?” 

“They’re not yours, because all your things are packed 
away. And there was nothing said about pudding.” 

Oh, so that was it! There had been ‘‘ nothing said 
about pudding,” and so Nanny had not brought it; pok¬ 
ing in her special form of nursery punishment. 

“All the same, I don’t see-” began Claudia; but 

Nanny had moved to the door; one corner of the tray on 
her hip, her left hand supporting the further side, her 
right hand ready for the handle, for there was never 
any fumbling about her. 

It was evident that pudding was hopeless, and Claudia 
gave it up. “Oh, well, I shall get undressed and go to 
bed.” 

Standing framed in the open doorway, the old woman— 
who had washed and dressed and fed her as a baby, tended 
her in all her childish illnesses—turned and looked at her 
for the first time that evening; looking at her precisely as 
her mother had done, as though she were a perfect stranger. 

“You can’t do that, for the master’s to see you directly 
he’s finished his dinner. Mr. Miles was clearing the table 
for dessert when I came up,” she said—with just about as 
much feeling as though, by dropping coins into an autom¬ 
aton, one got words in their place, as few and non¬ 
committal as possible—and vanished with her tray, shut¬ 
ting the door behind her. 

Surely never, never, even in that orderly household, 
had there been so complete and silent a closing of doors. 

“Good Lord, anyone would think that there was some¬ 
one dead!” cried Claudia loudly and defiantly, addressing 
herself to the empty room. But for all that she was 
getting frightened, really frightened; so frightened that 
she forgot that she was still hungry. What was going to 
happen? What had happened? 

The memory of that tipsy shout came back to her. 
“ ’Ope yer left ’is lordship well!” and her cheeks burned, 


194 


REPUTATION 


seeming to stiffen with heat. Oh, but they couldn’t know 
about that here, Clara and Nanny and people—people like 
that—couldn’t—couldn’t! Why, it wasn’t the sort of 
thing that any servant would think of, much less speak of, 
here at home, here in the smug, safe Rectory. 

The door opened again, and Nanny stood there, holding 
it back. “The master is ready to see you in the study, 
Miss Claudia,” she said, and glanced at her young lady’s 
head. “Your hair-” 

“There’s no brush and comb.” Claudia spoke flatly, 
all her defiance lost in an intense anxiety to know what 
was going to be said to her, and Nanny—standing aside 
as for a procession of a funeral or a hanging, let her 
pass without another word, as though conscious of the 
inanity of trifles at such a moment. 

There was no one on the stairway or in the hall. Claudia 
had a mad idea that she would like to bang violently on 
the dark panels of the study door, then run away. All the 
same, she would not allow herself to hesitate, but opened 
it and walking straight in; hearing her father’s voice 
break off in something which sounded like, “if he wasn’t 

dead-” and wondering who could be dead; if it was 

that wretched little Frankie, and if it was for this reason 
that her father had bolted off to France, to try and inter¬ 
cept Francie by some means or other. Her thoughts were 
so quick that they worked like zig-zag lightning; all the 
same, it never occurred to her that her father might have 
gone after her—Claudia. He couldn’t know, no one could 
know, could have known, until she told the landlady of 
“The George,” that she had gone to France. 

The Rector was standing in front of the fire, her mother 
and grandmother seated at either side of it; Mrs. Waring 
on the very edge of her chair. They had tried to keep 
Granny out of it on the pretence that she was too old for 
any sort of “upset”; but Granny would not be kept out, 
was like the war-horse crying “Ha!” scenting the battle 
from far off. 




REPUTATION 


195 


“Oh, so you’ve come back, have you?” Mr. Waring 
shouted more than usual in a blurred sort of way, obviously 
at a loss for words. It was plain that he was worried to 
death, dreadfully embarrassed, ill at ease, tired to death; 
staring at his daughter with a sort of furious impatience 
which was, after all, easier to bear than the stony im¬ 
personal fashion in which the two women surveyed her; 
as though she were somebody that they did not care to 
know. Mrs. Waring’s mouth was pinched so tight that 
there were diagonal lines drawn down both below and 
above her lips. 

For once Claudia had nothing to say; the obvious im¬ 
pertinence that it looked as though she had come back, 
seeing that she was there, being beyond even her at that 
moment. 

Her father’s face held her; he was no longer freshly 
rosy, his skin was a purplish shade, coarsened and shadowed, 
misted over by a two days’ growth of white beard. The 
lines of it had fallen into sagging folds down either side 
of his mouth and about his chin: his eyes were bloodshot, 
his boom hoarse and muffled. 

“So you’ve come back, have you?” He repeated the 
words with the intensest bitterness; and then quite sud¬ 
denly moved forward a couple of steps, took his daughter 
by both shoulders and shook her. ‘ ‘ How the devil did you 
dare to come back, back here, walking in here, as though 
nothing had happened—just walking in? That’s what 

beats me! How the devil you—you-” His whole face 

was suffused with passion; he shook her again, so violently 
that she had to clench her teeth to keep them from rattling. 

“Henry!” Mrs. Waring had sprung to her feet with a 
little cry; but it was Granny who spoke his name, and in 
a moment her son’s hands dropped from Claudia s 
shoulders. 

“Forgive me, Mother!” he said; then added, God for¬ 
give me! ’ ’ and turning towards the mantelpiece, laid one 
arm upon it, dropped his head into his hands, and groaned. 


196 


REPUTATION 


His coat was creased and dusty, his white hair dull and 
ruffled. There were no signs of actual mud, beyond a 
few small splashes; but all the same, that ’s what he looked 
like—dragged in the mud. 

Mrs. Waring had sat down again; for a full minute there 
was complete silence in the room—no one stirred or spoke. 
Claudia stood with her arms crossed over her breast, either 
hand clasping the opposite shoulder. Her heart was 
throbbing as though it had a separate existence to the rest 
of her body. 

“Well,” said Granny at last, and the Rector turned 
round. For the first time since she entered the room, his 
eyes met his daughter’s; he gazed at her desperately— 
almost entreatingly. All his pomposity had gone—it was 
as though he were pricked; while there was something in 
his distraught and completely changed appearance that 
made it plain to Claudia, for the first time in her life, that 
her father loved her; had been almost overweeningly proud 
of her, confident in her. 

“What beats me,” he said, speaking very slowly, as 
though his brain were fumbling its way through dark and 
disordered rooms, “is how you got back here so quickly. 
Why, I myself did not see the news until I caught sight 
of it on the placards at Victoria. And then I thought— 

of course I thought-” He broke off, shuddering like 

a woman. 

“What news?” asked Claudia, speaking for the first 
time. Her mouth felt stiff and dry, as though it had been 
shut for centuries; her voice sounding flat and dull and 
far away in her own ears. What on earth had the placards 
in Victoria Station got to do with her? She knew that 
there was something dreadful coming, but she could not 
imagine what. 

“That he had been killed.” 

“Who had been killed?” 

“Lord Blagden, of course.” Mr. Waring’s excitement, 
his fury, had passed; he dragged out his words with an 



REPUTATION 


197 


air of infinite weariness as though the tragedy of which he 
spoke was, with all its sordidness, an actual weight, over¬ 
whelming him. 

If Claudia had exclaimed at this, shown any sort of 
surprise or horror, the whole course of her life might have 
been different: not necessarily better—far from it—but 
different, easier. As it was, she had a feeling as though 
someone had hit her suddenly, with great violence, on 
the head, knocking her silly, half insensible. Words were 
impossible to her; she could only stare. Oh, but the whole 
thing was impossible! There were people whom one could 
picture dead, but there were others with whom it was 
impossible to associate any such idea. That Blagden should 
be dead—killed; Blagden so flushed and full of an ex¬ 
uberant life, so jovial and confident and young; yes, so 
really and truly young, so steeped in life—was altogether 
out of the question. It was, indeed, quite impossible to 
focus one’s mind on such a thing. It cleared a space, 
leaving it void of all other thoughts, but that was all. 

“I got to Paris on Monday evening,” continued the 
Rector, speaking heavily and slowly. “There was Sunday 
—there were things to see to—I am not used to foreign 
travel of any sort, ’’ he added pathetically. I might 
perhaps have got there sooner, other men might have got 
there sooner, men who are accustomed to rushing about 
all over the Continent”—“like Blagden”—the words were 
clear both in his mind and his daughter’s, but neither 
spoke them. In any case, Blagden’s rushing was at an 
end once for all. 

“Other men might have done better,” he went on, but 
I’m not accustomed to that sort of thing. Then when we 
did get to Paris there was some difficulty in finding the 

hotel. It -was-” He broke off with a gesture of 

despair, then began again. “By God, how can a man go 
round enquiring about such things in connection with his 
own daughter—poking into hotel-books, registers I had 
to tell someone; I had to get help. Good God!” he broke 



198 


REPUTATION 


out suddenly as though someone had questioned or 
criticised him, “Fm not a private detective, am I?” His 
voice dropped again, dragging. “Of course they found it 
at once, and there was his name, staying there with a lady 
for three nights—for three nights! But there’s no need 
to tell you this, by God; there’s no need to tell you this! 
And yet you can stand there like that—like that! ’ ’ 

He stared at Claudia with amazement; and, indeed, in 
conjunction with her silence, her tearless composure, her 
appearance was little short of brazen! For though she 
made things untidy, left them untidy, she was one of 
those people who always look neat, compact, calm; and 
though she had not touched her hair with a brush since 
dawn that morning, it was only flattened into a greater 
smoothness, a little dulled by the pressure of her hat. 

“-Left for Monte Carlo that very next morning,” 

went on her father shamefacedly, confusedly; “the morn- 
ipg after I got to Paris. Anyhow, it would have been too 
late—too late! Anyhow, I could not have got there in 

time—in time for—to prevent-. Even if I had started 

at once, and perhaps I ought to have done that—but I 
couldn’t—how could I ? And it was too late in any case— 
there would have been at least one night.” He looked at 
the two older women desperately, as though entreating 
them to contradict him, but not at his daughter. ‘ ‘ Though 
of course there might have been explanations—there might 
have been . . . Come now, there might have been some 
sort of explanation—after only one night.” 

Mrs. Waring shook her head; her mouth worked, the 
tears began to run down her face. 

“Come now?” repeated her husband questioningly, and 
once more she shook her head. 

“Ah well, of course, and anyhow after three 

nights-!” He turned again towards the mantelshelf, 

picked up his pipes one by one and looked .at them; held 
one for a moment cradled in his palm; stretched out his 
other hand towards his tobacco-jar and drew it back. “Of 





REPUTATION 


199 


course, there were all possible enquiries made,” he went 
on in a sombre tone. “The young fellow from the Em¬ 
bassy was very good-natured, very kind.” 

It was odd how that struck at Claudia’s heart—from 
her father, who never expected anyone to be kind to him, 
would have felt insulted by the very suggestion of any 
such thing; felt it so completely his own prerogative to 
be kind, patronising. 

“It wasn’t me—all the same, it wasn’t me.” The 
words dropped from her sullenly, more than half in¬ 
articulately. 

“They occupied the same room,” mumbled her father, 
without looking at her, with his head turned aside as 
though he had not heard her; while Mrs. Waring, having 
recovered her self-control, save for the tears, which still 
fell from her eyes, sat like a stone—a stone with an un¬ 
meaning trickle of water running down it—and the old 
woman gazed straight in front of her, tapping the floor 
gently with one foot. 

“There could be no possible mistake about it. Mr. 
St. John was very intelligent and thorough. ... Of 
course, cooler, much cooler, than I was. The names entered 
were those of Lord Blagden’s son and his wife ... his 
own son!” 

His own son! The audacity, the triumphant, laughing 
malice of that! 

In after years, thinking back over it all, Claudia could 
see Blagden’s face as he signed the name of that son who 
regarded him with such deep disapproval; who had once 
declared that he looked upon him as nothing more than 
a disreputable relation by marriage. 

“I hoped that there might have been some sort of con¬ 
fusion, or mistake—people are so stupid about titles. But 
even so it was impossible; there were so many people who 

had seen—seen-” He turned and looked at his 

daughter, hesitating over the pronoun as though he could 
not bear to use the direct “you”; and then went on, with 



200 


REPUTATION 


a vague, wearied look round the room—“had seen them— 
had seen Blagden—and not alone. Lord and Lady Herries 
were communicated with by telegraph and found to be 
still in London. Lady Blagden was, of course, out of the 
question; she would not have consented to anything of the 
sort—why should she?—To sign the name of her own son’s 
wife, it was out of the question. Of course I saw that.” 

Mr. Waring’s voice dragged on with that flattened 
boom; as though he were boring himself by the long recital, 
and yet could not get clear of it. 

“Even then—even then—there might have been some 
hope; but there was some person who crossed in the same 
boat, knew Lord Blagden too well to be mistaken: described 
his—his”—his voice dropped, then broke—“his female 
companion,” he added after a moment mutteringly. 

“It wasn’t me,” said Claudia; “all the same, it wasn’t 
me in Paris.” There was no vehemence in her tone; she 
could not get it there, force herself to the real necessity for 
a denial. She was thinking of too many things all at 
once; it was like the damming up of a stream, no break¬ 
ing free from it. 

“There were the names in the hotel book, falsified 
names, but all the same, it was plain enough. He is very 
well known in Paris—and then there was the one room. 
Oh, my God ...” 

Once more the Rector laid his arm along the mantel¬ 
shelf, dropped his head upon it and groaned; while Claudia 
stared at him with growing horror, overcome by the realisa¬ 
tion that he, her own father, her own people—that any¬ 
one on earth, anyone in their senses, that is—could think 
of her as occupying the same room as Lord Blagden, a 
middle-aged man who slept with his mouth open. It would 
have been no use to say that was what she had meant to 
do, for she had never even thought of it. It had never 
even entered her head that running away with anyone 
was, in some ways, the ways that Mrs. Waring spoke of 


REPUTATION 


201 


as 11 disagreeable, ’ ’ precisely the same as being married, 
only disreputable instead of holy. 

“And now, pray, what’s to be done?” said old Mrs. 
Waring, looking at her son—who only shook his head—with 
the bright, bird-like glance of the very old, malicious as 
a child. 

“Something will have to be arranged,” said her 
daughter-in-law, speaking slowly and heavily. ‘ * Of course, 
with the other girls to think of and all—and then there’s 
the parish and everybody knowing . . . that man Knowles, 
forcing himself in here the very same morning and telling 
us, celling everybody; and Mr. Ashton, and the station- 
mas er at the junction—oh, everybody, everybody having 
seen them!” Not once did she turn to Claudia and say 
“seen you.” “A married man—a married man! And 
that’s what makes it so dreadful! A man of that 
position ...” She clasped her plump hands together in 
her lap so tightly that the knuckles shone. “And that 
Fair woman daring to come up here asking if we had had 
any news. Even if he is dead—and how do we know that 
he is really dead, a man like that, signing his own son’s 
name, how do we know anything?” 

“Oh, as to that—all that—circumstantial enough,” 
mumbled the Rector—“terrible, terrible—but still, no 
doubt about it: his train—the night express, too. ... It 
seems like the act of God—cut off like that in the very 
midst of his sins. An appalling catastrophe—the sort of 
thing that could not have happened in England—the train 
thrown right off the rails—over a hundred killed or in¬ 
jured. I saw that much in Paris before I left, and then 
his name at Victoria—plastered up everywhere. Someone 
must have seen him, recognised him. It is always like 
that: someone recognises you. Why, I, myself, was wait¬ 
ing for the train in the Gare du Nord when a man passed 
me and took off his hat, very civilly—a young fellow who 
looked like a clerk, or a man out of a shop—yes, more likely 


202 


REPUTATION 


it was that—a man out of a shop—and said: * Good morn¬ 
ing, Mr. Waring,’ just like that, in English, too, quite good 
English—must have been an Englishman and yet I can’t 
make out who it was; haven’t the faintest recollection of 
ever having seen the fellow’s face before. But he seemed 
to know me. Curious how things like that happen.” 

Mr. Waring’s voice was almost animated, as though he 
were in a measure revived by speaking of a matter which 
was not of the slightest importance to anyone. “It might 
have been—of course it might have been ...” In this 
sudden access of something very like geniality, his eye 
caught his daughter’s blackened by deep shadows, sullen, 
and apparently immense in her white face, and once more 
he broke off; turned towards the fire with a groan, lent upon 
the mantelshelf. 

“There must be some arrangement made,” said Mrs. 
Waring, “but I’m sure I don’t know what’s to be done. 
She’ll have to go away.” She spoke of Claudia as though 
she were not there. 

“We’ll all have to go away,” remarked the Rector 
gloomily; and there was a dead silence, while Claudia stood 
there with a feeling as though her limbs were mere 
draperies, without vitality, heavy with water, dragging 
her down. 

Who was that woman who registered herself as Lady 
Herries? There was a joke, if you like. . . . Oh, too 
ridiculous! Lord and Lady Herries—when really it was 
Blagden—“Lord Blagden and me.” 

She thought that— actually thought it!—putting it into 
clear words in her own mind. Then she pulled herself 
together. It wasn’t her; of course it wasn’t her. She was 
drifting into madness from sheer weariness; pushed into it 
by the force of what seemed like a reasonable continuance 
of ideas. From Dieppe to Paris. . . . She had been with 
him at Dieppe, people had seen them at Dieppe, it was no 
good denying that. 

“All the same, it wasn’t me,” she repeated stupidly, as 


REPUTATION 


203 


though trying to convince herself; and for the first time 
since she entered the room they all turned and looked at 
her: the two women coldly, with a sort of disgust, her 

father angrily. , 

“It’s no good lying like that,” he broke out. Where s 
the sense of lying about it? God knows it’s bad enough, 
disgraceful enough, without that. To realise that you— 
standing there looking like that—so unchanged, so, good 
heavens! untouched. ... It only shows that one never 
can know, never can; even with one’s own children it s 
too horrible to think what may be going on—to see you 
here in my own study and then to think of you there, at 
that accursed hotel, alone, alone with—that beastly room— 
and all the staring people— chamber-maids—waiters. . . . 
My God! my God! I thought I was strong enough, Chris¬ 
tian enough, to bear anything He was pleased to send me 

but this—this! ” , , , 

He made a wild and despairing gesture with both hands, 
as though to tear his way through something stifling and 

abominable. _ 

“To have a daughter, and you who I always thought so 
much of, expected so much from-if it had been one of the 

oth e rs - But no, no—not as yet, anyhow ; though 

there’s no knowing what may be coming to me— a daughter 
who everyone for miles around will be talking of, is talking 
of> as _ as ...” He broke off, repeating that same ges¬ 
ture, shaking his disordered head. 

“Adulteress!” said Granny, whipping it out as a whist- 
player whips out a trump card, raps it down upon the 

'"Since her last protest Claudia had felt herself even 
more completely weighed down by her' own thoughts :: an 
infinitude of speculations, which seemed far away, muffl 
and difficult to get at. This, indeed, was the strangest 
part of the whole thing: that everything which had passed 
since she had first gone up to her own room, found it 
stripped, was like a heavy dream, until her grandmother 


204 


REPUTATION 


woke her to life by that one word, flinging it at her with 
an air of almost childish daring; catching her so unexpec¬ 
tedly that she turned staring, her eyes dilating and 
widening: 

“What do you mean? You dare-" 

She stuttered a little. After the few broken words her 
mouth remained open as though she was still questioning, 
unable to believe her own ears. 

And this was, indeed, the case. For the word itself 
seemed to her mind so completely Biblical that it was 
scarcely to be realised out of the Bible, applied to anyone 
that anyone else knew, far less to herself. She was struck 
by it, wounded—wounded in such a way that she could 
never again hear it without a fierce sensation of burning 
from head to foot—but for all that, for the first moment, 
numbed. 

It was something in her grandmother's face, her trium¬ 
phant expression at the utterance of that epithet—which 
she herself had never heard in polite society; out of church 
—that brought it home to the girl; rubbed salt into it; 
infuriating her so that the colour flamed up over her en¬ 
tire face, then dropped again, leaving her whiter than ever. 

“What—that—that? To say that to me!—You beast, 
you! You filthy old beast! How dare you, how dare 
you, I say!" 

“Claudia, Claudia!" the other two cried out in horror. 
Her father laid his hand upon her arm, then, as she shook 
it off, dropped back with an air of helpless amazement; as 
though it were all beyond him, as it indeed was. For at 
that moment the girl's own parents counted for nothing; 
the whole affair lay between her and the old woman, who 
had, as a matter of fact, nothing whatever to do with it. 

Claudia had stepped up close to her grandmother, stood 
in front of her, trembling from head to foot with sheer 
anger and excitement. 

“Now, listen!" She stooped a little, looking down at 
her, for she was unable to lift herself from her chair— 



REPUTATION 


205 


even if her granddaughter had struck her, as it seemed she 
might do, she could not have risen to her feet: “If you 
say things like that to me, I’ll kill you.” 

The girl’s voice was hard and rasping. “You’re old 
enough to be killed, anyhow, ’ ’ she went on; “ sitting there, 
gloating like that! You’re glad, that’s what you are! 
Glad, because I’m young and you’re old, and you think 
you’ve got me. But let me tell you this, if you ever dare 
to say a thing like that again, I’ll kill you. ... You 
don’t know how strong I am—only look out! Don’t say 
I haven’t warned you.” Her words came slowly, widely 
separated, heavy with anger. 

‘ ‘ Claudia—Claudia! ” the other two cried out upon her 
again; but she took no notice of them. If she had pro¬ 
ceeded to put her threat into words, as, indeed, seemed 
likely, they might have stood there just the same, repeating 
her name, paralysed by horror; like people forced to wit¬ 
ness some act of incredible sacrilege. 

But the old woman retracted nothing, held her ground. 
“All I can say is I never have lived under the same roof 
with people of that sort, and I don’t see why it should 
be expected of me now,” she remarked in a high, detached 
voice; without turning her eyes aside from her grand¬ 
daughter’s face, and yet without looking at her: looking 
through her, past her, as it were. “One or the other of us 
must go, that’s all.” 

It must have been something in this air of complete in¬ 
difference, the best weapon of age against youth, which 
beat Claudia; for she muttered something, sulkily enough, 
about that being her grandmother’s own affair, she could 
do as she liked there; jerking herself together again with 
the reminder: “Only you won’t say things like that to 
me, that’s all!” And then, remembering the others, bend¬ 
ing towards them, with an almost pathetic eagerness: “If 

you’ll only listen to me, believe me-” She broke off 

as she realised the set of her mother’s mouth, as tight as a 
cobbled buttonhole; and turning to her father, was silenced 



206 


REPUTATION 


by his look of angry bewilderment and despair. “Oh, 
well, if they won’t, they won’t!” she said to herself, with 
something of her old obstinate defiance; then: “If only I 
could get him to myself he’d believe me.” 

All the same she did not greatly care one way or another. 
Nothing would ever be of any use again. It did not matter 
twopence whether she was forgiven or not forgiven; she was 
all too tangled up for that—bewildered, diddled. . . . That 
other woman . . . Blagden who was dead and whom she 
had thought she loved. . . . The spies that there had been 
all along about her, the curate, Knowles, the rest of that 
crew, she could never scrape herself free of them—after all 
what did it matter?—Nothing was worth worrying about, 
fighting for. 

“All right, you needn’t trouble yourselves,” she said, 
and with that turned and walked from the room. 

Mrs. Waring rose to her feet as the door slammed. She 
was trembling from head to foot, suddenly human. 
“What does she mean by that? She’ll do something,” she 
said; “do something dreadful.” 

“What can she do?” cried the Rector, as though he were 
at the end of everything. “Hasn’t she done all that any 
girl can? For Heaven’s sake let’s have an end of it, for 
to-night, at least; get to bed, try to sleep. I can’t have 
prayers to-night; I can’t—it’s beyond me! You must tell 
the servants; tell them to go to bed too.” 

“I don’t know what she’s going to do; one never knows 
with Claudia. Your, mother had no business to say that— 
she oughtn’t to have said it. After all, Claudia is my 
daughter, but she always hated her.” 

“What,” cried the old lady, “when she’s the only one I 
ever cared twopence about, the only one of the whole 
bunch—the only one that’s like me!” All of a sudden she 
crumpled up into a heap in her chair and began to cry— 
a very, very old, an almost senilely old woman. 

“Send for MacNeil to take me to bed. MacNeil’s the 
only one that understands me, the only one that’s not 


REPUTATION 


207 


turned against me. I shall leave MacNeil all my money.” 

1 i Good heavens, Mother!” cried the Rector hoarsely, 
“you talk as though we didn’t all . . .” He broke off as if 
in desperation and rang the bell. 

When MacNeil, who had been waiting for this, appeared 
upon the scene, bent over her mistress to help her from her 
chair, old Mrs. Waring clung to her, weeping. 

“You know I loved her, MacNeil. You know how I 
loved Miss Claudia—more than all the others put together 
—those dull, stupid things! You know I loved her, you 
know.” 

“Hm’m,” said MacNeil; “steady now, marm-” 

The old lady was on her feet, her fingers, that looked so 
soft, cushioned with fat, were like steel on her maid’s 
arm, digging into it. “Didn’t I, didn’t I—didn’t I tell 
you again and again that she was the only one with an 
ounce of brains in her head?” she cried. 

Half an hour later Mrs. Waring, in dressing-gown and 
slippers, knocking at Claudia’s door, lightly as a sort of 
form, then, turning the handle at the same moment, found 
it locked, to her complete, almost stupefied amazement. 
For no one had ever been known to lock a door in the War¬ 
ing household unless they happened to be having a bath— 
the usual tub-bath in their own rooms—at some unusual 
hour, the evening, say, because of a cold; and even then it 
was not necessary, for everyone knew if you had a cold, 
with the housemaid coming up with trays, and cans of hot 
water, and a fire in your bedroom and all. 

“Claudia, Claudia!” She knocked again, in earnest 
this time, and called her daughter’s name; warmed to 
some sort of still half-frozen maternity by the behaviour 
of her mother-in-law, who was a constant thorn in her 
flesh. 

Why, the girl might be ill! If she was ill, she might be 
half forgiven, momentarily forgiven; never altogether for¬ 
given, for everyone would know what had happened: the 
disgrace, the hopeless disgrace, of it all remaining with 



208 


REPUTATION 


them like an unhealed wound, a running sore. In the 
petrified state to which Claudia’s action had reduced her, 
the words, “make an honest woman of her”—“make an 
honest woman of her”—had been percolating through Mrs. 
Waring’s brain like a steady ooze of water through a stone. 
She could not stop it, and yet she was caught up again and 
again by the dreadfulness of the phrase; rightly applicable 
to the lower classes alone. 

How many times she had been to a girl’s mother—she 
could never bring herself to speak to the girl herself, to 
any girl who would do “that sort of thing,” even to look 
at her; fast bound in that dumb and obstinate shrinking 
from the uglier facts of life—and begged her to use every 
sort of pressure to induce the man who had betrayed her, 
whoever he might be, and whatever their own mutual feel¬ 
ings might be, to make “an honest woman” of her 
daughter. 

Surely if Lord Blagden was spoken to ... - 

Mrs. Waring would reach this point in a vague, numbed 
fashion—it had happened again and again, during the last 
few days—and then find herself jerked up by the realisa¬ 
tion of the impossibility of even this shabby, second-hand 
amendment, so far as her own daughter was concerned. 
For the whole thing seemed the more impossible to grasp 
from the fact that of all the bad girls that there had ever 
been during her reign, either at Leesden or Leesgrove, no 
single one of them had ever run away with a married man; 
a man whose death must be welcomed on account of his 
married state alone. 

Still, there was something in Granny’s behaviour that 
had moved her. After all, though on the face of it there 
seemed nothing to be proud of in fact, Claudia was her 
daughter and not her mother-in-law’s; and there had been 
one girl in Leesgrove who on her betrayer’s refusal to re¬ 
establish her honesty—and anyhow it never was quite the 
same, whatever anyone might say—had drowned herself 
in the lake in Leesgrove Park, almost within sight of the 


REPUTATION 


209 


house. Mrs. Waring remembered how dreadful this had 
seemed, even more dreadful than the fate of the unfortunate 
girl herself; and how she had said, “Supposing any of the 
family had been at home, supposing Lady Blagden herself 
had been standing at the window! ’ ’ 

It was some dim memory of this that had made her say 
of Claudia, “She'll do something dreadful.” 

She knocked again and called her daughter’s name, 
loudly; so scared as to almost forget the servants, sleeping 
up on the same floor—almost, but not, and never, quite— 
“Claudia—Claudia! What are you doing? You must 
open the door. Open it at once, do you hear ? Open it at 
once.” 

She was almost crying; and this in itself made her very 
angry—the feeling of Claudia having given her yet another 
fright and all for nothing—when Claudia answered her: 
“But, Mama, I’m in bed,” just as though nothing had 
happened. 

In bed and not committing suicide at all! Mrs. War¬ 
ing would have been horrified if anyone had told her that 
she was disappointed; but there was, without doubt, some¬ 
thing of that feeling which comes to us when we have 
scanned the obituary notice in the morning’s paper and 
failed to find the name of anyone we know even ever so 
slightly. 

Anyhow, there was no more calling or entreating; and 
with the feeling that Claudia had committed a grave im¬ 
pertinence—in what?—why, in locking the door, in going 
to bed at all, just like anyone else, under the circumstances 
—Mrs. Waring retired to her own room. 

In the early hours something—she could not have said 
what—awakened her; and she thought, after all one 
never did know with Claudia. Supposing she had only 
pretended to go to bed? For a moment or so she felt 
uneasy; then the silence of the house, the steady breathing 
of her husband at her side, her own state of somnolence, 
reassured her. It was impossible that anything very 


210 


REPUTATION 


dreadful could be going on in any household so wrapped 
in peace as this was. She was so sleepy that, for the mo¬ 
ment, without actually forgetting it—she could never do 
that—the sting of the elopement was dulled. She even 
found herself wondering if it had ever happened; if the 
room Number 135—her husband had told her the precise 
number, unable to keep away from the subject, boring on 
and on, just before he dropped asleep: ‘ 4 He, that young 
fellow from the Embassy, said the manager took him up 
to the room, number a hundred and thirty-five. No! I 
didn’t ask him if there were two beds, how could I? How 
on earth could I ? Anyhow it would have made no differ¬ 
ence”—had, indeed, been occupied by her daughter; that 
same Claudia who had stood drooping sullenly, looking 
so exactly like her old self—only not dressed for dinner, 
still wearing her blue serge skirt, red garibaldi and blue 
riband—in the study, that very evening. 

Her half-torpid mind drifted off to garibaldis. It was 
so exactly like Claudia, if she did elope, to elope in a thing 
like that. What a fuss she had made that last spring when 
Garibaldi himself died. . . . Almost as if he had been a 
relation! 


CHAPTER XVI 


“Why, Mother, Pm in bed!” 

It was not so altogether easy and indifferent as it sounded 
—for on a bed and in a bed are not the same thing— 
though scarcely to be counted as a lie. As a matter of fact 
Claudia had stretched herself, still fully dressed, upon 
the bed, her head buried, face downwards, in the pillow; 
while she was conscious of the grimaces to which she was 
forced in getting out those cool-sounding words, unbroken 
by sobs. 

She buried her face again directly her mother had gone; 
pressing it into the pillow. But once her sobs were really 
driven back, they came to an end; and it was a very long 
time before she cried again—something like years; while 
it seemed as though, with that pressing of her face into 
the pillow, she was pressing down something into herself; 
filling herself full with the complete, tightly-packed reali¬ 
sation of what it all meant. 

There was a hard strain in her; or perhaps more a sort 
of carelessness—a criminal carelessness, in regard to the 
feelings of others—than real hardness; and with people 
like this the brutal and unvarnished truth, even if it is 
only the truth of the face value that the world puts upon 
them and their actions, bites more deeply than anything 
else. 

There was that coarse jest of the half-drunken lounger 
in the stable-yard of “The George,” and that one scorch¬ 
ing word from her grandmother—“adulteress.” Claudia 
rammed these two down into her consciousnesss with a 
peculiar and ungirlish courage: savoured them in all their 
bitterness; turning them round upon the palate of her 
mind. It was no use any longer to pretend that it did not 

211 


212 


REPUTATION 


matter what people said. She was suddenly and com¬ 
pletely grown up in realising that it did matter; and that 
whatever she might find to say in the way of denial or 
excuse, it would make no difference whatever. She was 
smirched; she, with her pride and her courage, her pride in 
her courage. 

Though, even so, she had not had determination enough 
to carry the thing through. If she had she might be dead 
now, as Blagden was dead; but she was always a half and 
halfer. She told herself this with contempt, though she 
was conscious of a shamed sense of relief at the fact of 
being still alive. All the same, she had not cleansed her¬ 
self by what she had done, or rather by what she had not 
done: only befouled herself the more deeply; while the 
more she explained the more bedraggled would she grow. 

And this was not all; she had smirched the others, too. 
It did not so much matter about her married sisters, but 
the younger ones, and Gertrude; for after all Gertrude 
was a sort of human being, super-sensitive upon this one 
point as to what “people said.” Gertrude had a right to 
her life as much as anyone else. All those others, even her 
father and mother, had a right to their lives; and now she, 
Claudia—always so insistent upon her own freedom—had 
tangled them up with her own. 

The only thing was to get away out of it; they could 
never forget or forgive—oh, never, never, never, in that 
parish, in that county—so long as she was there, a con¬ 
tinual reminder, a continual stimulus to gossip. No, she 
must take herself away out of sight, and hope that it might 
be out of mind also. 

She was such a child, and yet in some ways how mature 
she must have been to realise this as she did, force herself 
to it. 

She never even thought of killing herself; and she was 
mature in that, too, for it is, in general, the very young 
who contemplate suicide with the first growing-pains of 
life; but she must get away, disappear. 


REPUTATION 


213 


It was no good pretending that anyone would miss her: 
* ‘ If they do it will be a good miss, anyhow , 9 9 she thought; 
but for once without bitterness, fully realising the truth of 
that adage, “Out of sight out of mind”; which is, really, 
one of the greatest consolations of life, though people will 
persist in looking upon it, or pretending to look upon it, 
as otherwise. 

Nothing could ever be explained away; that was out of 
the question. Claudia was unacquainted with any cyni¬ 
cal maxims to that effect, but she knew that the more you 
explained things the worse it made them; had known it, in 
her bones as she would have said, almost ever since she was 
a baby, to the exasperation of Nanny. Now, somewhere in 
the back of her mind, was the feeling that there might be 
a world, far away from Leesden-cum-Leesgrc v e—her 
hampering position as Rector’s daughter—where almost 
anything might be forgiven to a person who never at¬ 
tempted to explain. She had met people, even in the vil¬ 
lage at home, who had histories and they were uniformly 
bores because they told them: if they had left them to be 
guessed at, speculated upon, it would have been altogether 
different. 

Claudia sat up at this, pushed her hair back from her 
hot forehead and felt round for her shoes; kicking aside 
Pickles who was asleep with his nose in one of them. 

If she was going away she had better make haste about 
it. 

She had reached over to the chair upon which she had 
thrown her long ulster and begun to feel in the pocket for 
her purse, when the thought of Francie came to her; at¬ 
tacking her, as it seemed, in the very middle—the biblical 
seat of all emotion and sorrow—so that she bent double 
with the agony of it; squeezing herself round upon it, as 
though by holding it tight she would lessen some of its 
power. She would never see Francie again, never, never, 
she was sure of that; and Francie had gone away thinking 
that she was a beast, an indifferent beast. And so she 


214 


REPUTATION 


was: in dreadful, wide streaks which obliterated every¬ 
thing else in life. 

Francie’s face winnowed to and fro in front of her like 
a pale fan, with its wistfulness, its entreaty, its dreadfully 
hurt look. It was no use for Claudia to say to herself, and 
she did not even think of it: “It is really all Frankie’s 
fault: if Frankie had not married her and gone off to 
Africa, she would be here now”—for everything was alto¬ 
gether her fault, seeing that Francie, really, in her heart 
of hearts, loved her far better than she loved her husband: 
and it is to the people who love us that we are entirely 
responsible. 

If Francie died she, Claudia, would have murdered her. 
And she would die, not because of the climate of Africa, 
but because she was miserable. It was an extreme view 
to take, but there was something in it, for a bad climate 
and misery combined are the very devil. 

Moreover, she would be miserable, not because Claudia 
had disgraced herself by running away with Lord Blagden, 
but because she had forgotten to say good-bye to her, as¬ 
sure her of her love before she left. It seemed a petty sort 
of thing, but that is one of the difficulties of life: the real¬ 
isation of the fact that what is petty for us may be the one 
supreme effort of passionate unselfishness for another; or 
vice versa. And there is always that to remember: what 
is big to us may be petty to others. 

Francie’s love for her sister filled out her life, was as 
big as anything that she was capable of, and Claudia knew 
it. 

And this was the way in which she had repaid it, this 
was the end of it. Never, for one moment, did she think 
that she could make amends; she was far-seeing enough 
for that. 

Apart from all this, or, rather, in addition to it—there 
was shame: a shame that bit into her. The shame, not of 
what she had done, but of what she had failed to do; the 
shame of that incredible and humiliating return; the sheer 


REPUTATION 


215 


inanity of thinking—she, a woman of the world as she had 
imagined herself to be—that she could just slip back into 
her own place. It must be that she had caught something 
of Lord Blagden’s belief that everything blew over, sooner 
or later. 

At the thought of Blagden she was seized with a fresh 
agony of regret and grief. She did not love him; but 
what a dear he was, had been, rather—it was awful to 
think of him in the past tense like that!—and how cruel 
she had been; inflicting a wound upon him at his most 
vulnerable point—his vanity. For one’s vulnerable point 
is one’s vulnerable point, whatever it may be; and in 
general the same as Blagden’s, whatever anyone may say. 

For once Claudia Waring was down in the depths of hu¬ 
miliation and self-contempt; utterly wretched, entirely al¬ 
truistic. She had ceased to matter, so far as she herself 
was concerned; the only thing that did matter was that 
taking of herself off so that she should no longer spoil the 
life of other people. For that was all there was to her; 
she was like a scourge or a plague. 

All this time, with all this self-abasement, there was 
another thought, like a separate layer of intelligence, slid¬ 
ing quickly to and fro; a thought for the practical side 
of the whole thing. 

She laid her damp ulster across her knee, and taking out 
her purse counted the money which still remained to her 
—no more than two pounds seventeen shillings and some 
odd pence, out of that twenty-three pounds. 

She remembered Mrs. Spraggart. It was wonderful 
how swiftly and surely this suh-mind of hers worked, how 
smoothly everything slid into place; so unlike the turgid 
disorder of that other mind, entirely occupied by emotion. 
Mrs. Spraggart, who had been the landlady at some sea¬ 
side lodgings in which the entire family had stayed three 
years earlier, was clean and capable, if a trifle cringing. 

But cringing people might be useful now; Claudia ac¬ 
tually thought of this. 


216 


REPUTATION 


She had moved to London because her son, the only 
person belonging to her, had got a situation as what she 
called a “clurk” in London; established herself in a little 
house off the Maida Yale road and gone on taking lodgers. 

Just before Francie was married it had been thought 
necessary for her to see an occulist and Nanny had taken 
her up to London as Mrs. Waring could not get away from 
home; that was the last time Piers had been at home on 
leave. 

Nanny had declared Mrs. Spraggart’s house to be clean 
“for London”—with a sniff—and cheap; so that seemed 
the place for Claudia to go. She remembered the address 
—5 Balmoral Row—because it seemed so silly to think of a 
row of Balmorals—as castles. Though there was an old- 
fashioned make of lady’s boot of that name; and Claudia 
had ultimately fixed it like this in her mind’s eye; a double 
row of low boots with cashmere tops and low heels, turning 
up a little at the toes, in the way all old ladies’ boots do. 
All the same she had not the remotest idea of the position 
of Maida Yale; though it seemed to be a very remote place 
judging from Francie’s long account of how difficult it 
had been to get back there after having belladonna in her 
eyes; more particularly as one of the bus horses fell down, 
and she was sure that the driver was drunk. 

All those little details, which Francie loved to give, slid 
to and fro, with the other swift sliding thoughts, through 
Claudia’s brain; though she only thought of them because, 
in all that her sister had said, there might have been found 
—like one grain of wheat in a bundle of chaff—some indi¬ 
cation as to the direction in which Maida Yale lay. 

But of course there was nothing; and, despite the dread¬ 
fulness of all that she herself had done, the certainty that 
she would never see Francie again, Claudia was sensible 
of a sharp sense of exasperation with her sister over this: 
for if she did not know the direction, she must take a cab, 
and it might be miles and miles away and run into a great 
deal of money. 


REPUTATION 


217 


The fare up to London was ten shillings. As it was im¬ 
possible to calculate the other expenses she would put them, 
including a telegram to Mrs. Spraggart, at another ten. 
She believed that she could live upon a pound a week; some¬ 
where or other she had heard that sum quoted as the 
ultimate ambition of a working-class family. In Leesden- 
cum-Leesgrove, and the other villages in the neighbour¬ 
hood, people brought up their families upon eleven shil¬ 
lings, so that she ought to be able to manage perfectly well 
for two weeks, with a little care: and long before that she 
would have got work upon a newspaper, writing special 
articles about all sorts of interesting things. In her spare 
time she would write a book. 

She must only take just as much as she could carry, for 
she would have to walk the three miles to the station and a 
brown-paper parcel would be lighter than a bag. It 
would be ridiculous to leave all her other clothes behind; 
they were dowdy, but she would have no money to buy 
others; besides, the younger girls would not be allowed to 
wear them, for they were ‘'branded with shame”! This 
sentence sprung complete and clear-cut to her mind; it 
sounded silly, but all the same it might come in for her 
book. 

The best thing would be to leave a note asking her 
mother to send on her clothes, giving her address, explain¬ 
ing what she was doing and why she was doing it. There 
might be something of a fuss, but that would be over 
the fact of her having taken such a step without con¬ 
sulting them. Their real feeling would be one of intense 
relief. 

Claudia wrote her letter, with full details of her plans, 
for she felt very old, deliberate and thoughtful, determined 
to give no further cause for anxiety; and this deliberate 
and dutiful thought for others braced her like the putting 
on of a pair of stays. She also asked for Francie’s ad¬ 
dress. How many times had Francie said to her, “You 
will write, won’t you?” gazing at her with anxious, strained 


218 


REPUTATION 


eyes, while she had answered that of course she would, 
without even troubling to ask where. 

After she had collected the absolute necessities for a 
couple of nights or so—and when she got back to her room 
after that interview in the study she found that Nanny 
had replaced certain of her own possessions—she dis¬ 
covered that she would have to go to their own sitting- 
room for brown paper and string; and lighting a candle 
crept down the stairs and along the first-floor passage, with 
its sharp turn; its doors like closed lips, shut eyes, so 
queerly unfamiliar in the odd wavering light. 

She was frightened that someone might open one of the 
doors and look out, saying, “Oh, Claudia!”—afraid and 
yet disappointed when nothing of the sort happened. For 
the doors did not seem shut, but had a ‘ 1 shutting-out, ’ ’ pur¬ 
poseful air about them. 

The sitting-room looked unnaturally tidy, frozen into 
order by her absence. It smelt of the hygienic soap that 
Gertrude always used, and there were no flowers; no scraps 
of paper on the hearth—for they were where they ought 
to be, and never had been, in the waste-paper basket; no 
books opened face downwards on the chairs, no disordered 
chair covers. 

All the pencils and pens on the writing-table were laid 
out in a row according to size; the blotter was open, and 
on it, in Gertrude's neat handwriting, lay the latest list 
of engagements and resolutions. There was a G. F. S. 
meeting, and choir practice and early service next day; 
there was also a note to the effect that she had determined to 
suffer with meekness the shame that “poor misguided 
child" had brought upon them all: to pray for her every 
night and morning; and if she stayed at home—it had evi¬ 
dently been written after the return—keep her reminded 
of her sin, lead her to repent. At the end, in large 
printing letters, was written: “To try not to shrink 
away from C! ’ ’ 


REPUTATION 


219 


Claudia scrawled “Go to hell” across it in her own 
dashing hand, and swung out of the room with her brown 
paper and string; she did not mind now who heard her, 
but nobody did. 

It was only just after twelve, and though she lay down 
upon the bed she was quite sure that she could not sleep. 
She was off in a moment, however, and did not wake until 
it was just upon half-past five: time for her to tidy herself 
up and start off upon the long dark walk to the station, for 
there was a train to London at seven. 

Pickles was still asleep, having scratched up one corner 
of the hearthrug into a ridge which kept his back warm. 
He opened one eye when Claudia got up, then dropped off 
to sleep again. She had quite determined not to take him: 
she could not afford to keep a dog with only two pounds 
seventeen shillings and some odd pence in the world, and 
anyhow what could she do with him in London ? She had 
also made up her mind not to kiss him, or hug him, or 
say good-bye, for it would only make it worse for both of 
them. All the same, she was cut to the heart when he 
opened one eye again—just as she was lacing on her still 
wet boots, which of course meant going out—glanced at 
her, glanced at the brown-paper parcel, and then shut it 
very tightly, with a transparent pretence of slumber; ob¬ 
viously replete with journeying; wearied out with strange 
countries, strange people and odious crowds of which he 
could see little save the heels that he was jerked away from 
biting. 

Oh, hut it was clear that even her own dog did not want 
to have anything to do with her, and at the moment it 
seemed to Claudia Waring as though the bitterness of death 
had got hold of her: as though she were utterly and entirely 
alone, forsaken; and there is no worse feeling in life than 
this. 

It was a dreadful morning, cold and dark and dank. 
The road to the station, three miles at the best, had 


220 


REPUTATION 


dragged itself out to so hopeless a length that it seemed 
impossible it should ever come to an end. She could not 
see the puddles; every now and then she stumbled on to 
the edge of the grass; but when she tried to walk on the 
grass and so keep out of the mud, she walked into the 
fence. The brown-paper parcel grew heavier and heavier. 
Her hands were so numbed that she could scarcely feel 
it; yet if she held it by the string it cut through her 
fingers as though they were already raw. Her chest was 
tight, her throat was sore; there was an occasional violent 
shooting pain between her shoulders. 

During the last half-mile she almost forgot the possibil¬ 
ity of there being any sort of an objective to such a night¬ 
mare of a walk; any reason for such a blank and unre¬ 
lieved stretch of misery. She might have stopped, given 
in, had it not seemed, on the whole, easier to go on; though 
it did not really matter either way. 

In the end she came upon the station with a sense of 
shock and surprise, as though it were almost an insult to 
find it there, so smugly set in its old hollow; while she 
heard her own hoarse voice asking for a ticket as though it 
were someone else’s; and waited for the train, propped 
against a pillar, without the faintest belief in its ultimate 
arrival. 

When it did come and she got into it she fell into an 
immediate and heavy sleep, as though she had been 
drugged; was awakened at Paddington station by the 
united efforts of a porter and the guard; who, to her great 
amazement, enquired if she were ill—a question never be¬ 
fore put to her. 

The cab to Balmoral Row only cost her half-a-crown—it 
was the guard himself who found it and put her into it— 
and even that was too much, for it was no distance; more 
Paddington than Maida Vale, thought Maida Vale sounded 
better, or so Mrs. Spraggart thought. 

She was conscious, however, of nothing apart from an 


REPUTATION 


221 


immense sense of relief at the smallness of the fare, as she 
stood with her brown-paper parcel under her arm, twisting 
herself together round all her pains, waiting for Mrs. 
Spraggart to open the door. 

She was a very long while coming, and when she did 
appear seemed so altogether bewildered that Claudia was 
taken aback: ‘ ‘ Oh, but you must have got my telegram by 

now/’ she said; then remembered that she had forgotten to 
send it, and was thus a shilling richer than she had 
thought. When the door of number five shut to, she 
could not have said whether she was inside or out: though 
the sharp slam of it seemed, oddly enough, to be part and 
parcel of that agonising pain which caught her in the back, 
as a hiccough pain will sometimes do, just between the 
shoulders. 

Someone said: “Well, I never—Lor’, now!” while 
Claudia seemed to smell herrings, see the basement kitchen 
at St. Leonards where she had helped the landlady make 
toast, centuries, oh, centuries ago—and that was the end. 

Mrs. Spraggart made sure of her from the address upon 
the inside of the brown paper, which had held something 
of Gertrude’s—if it had not it would not have been so care¬ 
fully folded away with the string round it—and wrote to 
Mrs. Waring to inform her that her daughter was down 
with congestion of the lungs; that the room was fifteen 
and sixpence a week, lights and fire five shillings a week 
extra, but double seeing that it was “night and day,” that 
the doctor had been and would come again that evening, 
and, please, who was to pay him?—too much of “the 
lady” to ask about herself. 

As for Claudia, she was dimly conscious of her mother’s 
face, just when she was at her very worst and the ceiling 
most certainly coming down upon her; she was also con¬ 
scious of a nurse in a very long, stiff, black alpaca dress, 
who breathed so heavily that the sound of it caught her 
own chest; but she was chiefly engrossed with the thought 


222 


REPUTATION 

of how lucky it was that the cab had only cost half a 
crown, and that she had not sent the telegram after all, 
thereby saving a shilling. 

It really did seem as though Lord Blagden’s theory that 
everything always turned out all right in the end must be 
true after all. 

By the time that she really began to gather herself to¬ 
gether again—emerging from the stifling oppression and 
pain, the fight for breath which reminded her of one time 
when she had got buried under a haycock and nearly suf¬ 
focated—Mrs. Waring had disappeared; while almost as 
soon as the nurse began to take shape as a real human 
being, with a temper, she also vanished and Claudia was 
alone; save at such intervals when Mrs. Spraggart brought 
her her food or tidied her room. 

Nobody wrote her from Leesden Rectory, and she seemed 
to have dropped into a world completely apart from any¬ 
thing which had gone before; a state as apart from her old 
self as from everything else; an indifferent weakness broken 
by innumerable short spells of sleep, which ran the day 
and night into one; a period when the only thing that had 
any power to irritate her was the random way in which 
the pattern on the wallpaper had been matched at the 
joins. 

One day her landlady brought her some flowers and said 
that they had been sent up from her own home. But 
Claudia knew better, for there were no chrysanthemums 
out in the Rectory garden at that time of year. And be¬ 
sides, who would have sent them? If they had sent her 
anything they would have sent her jam; and they wouldn’t 
do that because she was beyond the pale. No one would 
have thought of flowers but Francie, and Francie was as 
good as dead; why, they would not even give her Francie’s 
address. 

No, no, it was no more than Mrs. Spraggart’s rather 
cringing kindness. She had meant well, but Claudia was 
more depressed than ever after it; so depressed that the 


REPUTATION 


223 


doctor thought that it might rouse her to go downstairs, 
and she was established every afternoon in front of the 
fire in a little sitting-room upon the ground floor. 

This jolted her back to something like real life, and she 
realised her own weakness, the failure of everything which 
she had set herself out to do, the immense debt into which 
she must be running herself. 

When she spoke of this last to Mrs. Spraggart she was 
told that ‘ 4 The Reverend ’ ’ was paying all expenses for the 
time being; and that the young lady must get well and 
not worry. 

Claudia w T rote and thanked her father. It was dreadful 
to have to accept the money; but she faced the matter with 
some courage for, after all, why should Mrs. Spraggart 
suffer for her pride, She would take it for a few weeks, 
she said, and after that she hoped to be earning her own 
living and “no more trouble to anyone.” Meanwhile, 
would they send her Francie’s address ? 

There was no answer to this letter, and, gritting her 
teeth upon it, Claudia got to work and wrote an article 
upon the hot springs of New Zealand, compounding it from 
an old All the Year Bound which she found in Mrs. Sprag¬ 
gart’s sitting-room, and sending it in to the Morning Post. 

Before it came back she wrote a story after the pattern 
of “The Moonstone” from the same volume; intending it 
as a serial, though, in the end, it came to nothing more 
than a very short story. 

It was just after this that she had a visit from Lady 
Blagden; when she was still scarcely recovered from her 
illness, mentally raw and savagely suspicious of everyone 
and everything. 

She was sitting alone in front of the fire in her little 
sitting-room, in the dim obscurity of a foggy afternoon, 
with the one gas-jet already lighted, intensifying the gen¬ 
eral dinginess, creating a small yellow fog of its own and 
contributing nothing whatever in the way of brightness, 
when a carriage stopped at the door, and she became con- 


224 


REPUTATION 


scious of something which sounded like the jangle of bits, 
the clatter of light hoofs drawn up suddenly upon the paved 
road, as though horses had been stopped at a place which 
they had never thought it possible that they could be 
stopped at; though she was still too beaten down to get 
out of her chair and move to the window and see what was 
happening; even when the bell rang, with that insolent and 
prolonged peal with which no one excepting a servant, at 
the door of a house which he himself would consider as 
being beneath contempt, can sound it. 

There was a low murmur of voices, then Mrs. Spraggart 
opened the sitting-room door, and breathing rather more 
quickly than usual, announcing, ‘ ‘ A lady to see you, miss, 9 ’ 
was immediately followed by the lady herself, who came 
straight into the room and shut the door very decidedly 
behind her. 

“Does she listen at doors V’ she enquired; and Claudia 
answered that she did not suppose she did, she had too 
much to do, but did it matter anyhow? 

She had risen to her feet and stood regarding her visi¬ 
tor from under her drooping eyelids, with no word of 
greeting or enquiry, sullen and aggrieved; for what right 
had anyone to force themselves in upon her in this fashion ? 
There came a time, later on, when she was almost grateful 
to people for coming to see her, but that was a transitory 
state of affairs, very soon past; while even at the worst she 
had a fierce hatred and suspicion of anything in the least 
like patronage. 

“Oh, well, I daresay she knows anyhow—all there is to 
know. ’ 9 

The newcomer, having disposed of the possible eaves¬ 
dropper with a gesture, supposed that she might as well 
sit down and took a seat, with a stiff," well-bred composure 
which received no encouragement whatever from Claudia, 
who could visualise herself later on—when she got far 
enough away to see things more clearly—as standing there, 


REPUTATION 225 

gorming and glowering like the ill-tempered country girl 
she was. 

The newcomer folded both black-gloved hands in her lap, 
shiny black kid which the girl specially disliked; smoothing 
the back of one ever so gently with the other, as she looked 
up at her reluctant hostess, standing resting one arm upon 
the edge of the mantelshelf, almost like the Rector himself; 
and, indeed, Claudia Waring was at that time the strangest 
blend of the elder members of her family, resembling them 
most when she pretended to despise them: with the 
thought of what would Granny, or Papa or Mama say to this 
or that continually in her mind; insensibly modelling her¬ 
self upon the one in her efforts to do nothing whatever like 
the other. 

For a good minute or more her visitor remained with her 
strangely light grey eyes, small and keen, yet not unkindly, 
full upon her; silent and still—save for that slight move¬ 
ment which was in no sense of the word fidgeting; while 
Claudia thought: “That’s the way to impress people, to 
sit like that, quite still, saying nothing.” 

She was an exceedingly neat person, exceedingly well- 
bred looking, even distinguished, despite her want of 
height, for she couldn’t have been more than five foot one, 
was thin to meagreness. Her smooth, shining black clothes 
were well-cut for those days, giving an impression of some¬ 
thing like light armour. With her slender feet, in neat 
patent-leather boots, crossed, her long fur-trimmed coat 
thrown back, she sat there—amazingly enough, considering 
who she was—with an air of complete restfulness; so that 
in the days to come, hearing her and her husband spoken 
of, Claudia was not surprised that people said: “What¬ 
ever happened, whatever sort of scrape he got into, he 
always came back to her,” fitting it in, taking some time 
over it, but getting it at last, a very complete picture, too, 
with those other tales of her general competence, energy 
and business capacity. 


226 


REPUTATION 


“I suppose you know who I am?” she said at last, and 
Claudia answered that she did; as she had, indeed, done 
from the very first moment, though she had never seen her 
before. 

“All the same, I don’t know what you’ve come for,” she 
added ungraciously. 

“For the simple reason that, from all I hear, you’re 
supposed to be the last person who saw my husband 
alive. ’ ’ 

“Well, I wasn’t,” Claudia answered bluntly, returning 
her visitor’s glance with an odd feeling that here was some¬ 
thing so decisively clean-cut that the whole atmosphere 
of the room was the clearer for it; if there was to be a fight 
she would anyhow know where she was; there would be no 
tearful reproaches, no sort of stuffy appeals to religion, or 
what she had heard spoken of as her “better self.” 

“No?” Lady Blagden raised one elbow to the arm of 
the chair and rested her chin upon the knuckles of her 
gloved hand—and this in itself impressed Claudia, who 
could scarcely think, found it impossible to endure any sort 
of emotion with her gloves on—though otherwise she did 
not stir; while her glance remained steady, neither aggres¬ 
sive nor condemnatory, merely thoughtful. “No? Well, 
if you say ‘no,’ I’d feel inclined, despite everything, to 
believe you.” 

Claudia made no answer to this, and after a moment’s 
pause she continued: “There was a woman with my hus¬ 
band when he took tickets for two in the express that 
morning, there was a woman with him in the train, in the 
restaurant car; for they were seen together: he was too 
noticeable, too well known, to escape recognition. Whoever 
was with him, however, disappeared after the accident. 
It seems that he was out in the corridor at the moment; if 
it had not been for that he might have escaped.” 

“H-m-m!” said Claudia. 

And once more Lady Blagden gazed at her in silence 
with a faint hint of something akin to amusement on her 


REPUTATION 


227 


dead-white face; for there was no trace of anything like 
real colour anywhere, even in her eyebrows, though for all 
that she was an attractive—more, an arresting— 
personality. 

“You're a strange girl; I had not expected.'* She 
paused meditatively, then went on: “It seems that you ap¬ 
peared at your own home almost immediately after; so 
quickly that I myself believed, at first sight, that it was 
impossible. But it wasn’t. I made enquiries and found 
that a Paris train passed the wreck almost immediately 
after the accident took place, was indeed delayed for a short 
while, less than half an hour, which it made up later, by 
some of the debris that had fallen across the line. If you 
had the nerve and the wit to get straight into that train, 
to miss no single connection until you reached home, it 
might have been done." 

“I wasn’t there," repeated Claudia impassively. 

“I didn’t say it was done; I said it might have been," 
remarked the elder woman, regarding the young girl, who 
might almost have been her own granddaughter, pensively. 
After a moment or so the first hint of anything like emo¬ 
tion came into her face, crossing it like a faint wind on a 
pool of still water. 

“I would ask you to remember that despite everything 
perhaps all the more because of everything, he was still my 
husband. I—I was—well, naturally, we had had all our 
youth together-attached to him; so that I am anxious, you 
will understand that, to know anything there is to know 
concerning his last moments: the manner of his death, if 
there was—-it could not have lasted, that was one comfort, 
the doctors all agreed upon that—but if there was any 
sign or sound of ... of anything like acute suffering. 
You must realise, for I suppose you yourself have feelings, 
how much I want to know this, how much I want to know 
anything there is to be known; the very fact of my 
presence here will tell you that." 

Her voice quickened and deepened as she spoke; the 


228 


REPUTATION 


hand under her chin opened and shut, until, with a de¬ 
termined effort at self-control, she laid it once more in her 
lap; folded the other over it, stroking it into stillness with 
the tips of her fingers. 

“I think you will tell me the truth. I think, though it 
seems a strange thing to say to such a child—and yet you 
can’t be that—after, after all—all this— anyhow, to say to 
you, of all people, under the circumstances*—you will 
understand how I feel.” 

“I do understand,” said Claudia, while a curious sort of 
relaxation showed itself in her attitude, as though she were 
involuntarily bending forward to meet the other woman 
half-way, allowing herself to he human. '‘Indeed, I would 
tell you if I had been there, but I wasn’t. I’ve told you 
once that I wasn’t.” She pulled herself up upon this. 
A fortnight ago she would have been ready to do anything 
on earth to help anyone at the slightest appeal to her 
feelings of pity or emotions, once this distress really got 
home to her; but she would never be quite like that again, 
altogether off her guard. 

“And yet you did cross to Dieppe with him—that seems 
perfectly certain. You were seen there; you were seen in 
the train. Someone walked past your carriage twice— 
someone with the instincts of a prying housemaid,” added 
Lady Blagden with bitter contempt. “But there you are ; 
when a woman does that sort of thing she calls for the criti¬ 
cism, the espionage of the servants’ hall. My husband 
had a lady with him at the hotel in Paris. They—it seems 
a terrible thing to say to a girl like you, and yet you can’t 
be—you can’t be what you look! . . . Though I don’t 
know—I don’t know.” 

Her steady gaze was full upon Claudia: it seemed as 
though she were not merely looking at her, but thinking— 
quickly and cleverly despite all stress of feeling; and she 
did feel, acutely, too; drawing deductions which were so 
discriminating, that she might have been taking the girl to 
pieces, putting her together again, slowly and thoughtfully. 


REPUTATION 


229 


Her own son had said of his father that he was like a 
quick-change artist in his affairs, adding—with that acid 
bitterness which was his one form of wit—that he ought 
to find some way of making money, paying his debts, out 
of such a talent. It was quite on the cards—and Lady 
Blagden knew it—that her husband might have stayed in 
Paris with one lady and started for Monte Carlo with 
another; more particularly if he had been in any sort of 
way baulked in his passion—she knew his childish, in¬ 
credulous rage at anything of this sort. She could even 
conceive of him starting for Paris with one friend, arriv¬ 
ing and staying there with another. But surely, surely, if 
this were the case the girl would be only too eager to have 
her say: no woman in her senses could be willing to re¬ 
main under such a suspicion as rested upon her, if it were 
once possible to disprove it. 

“You tell me that you were not in the train, did not 
leave Paris wfith him. But it was you who were with him 
in that hotel? Or was it not you? Tell me that, one way 
or another. I know that everything points to it, but all 
the same, I’ll believe you if you tell me that it was not so. 
Oh, don’t you see I’m the only one who really knew him— 
could believe you, knowing how quickly he changed his 
mind, his tastes. And not only that, don’t you see, can’t 
you see, all that it means to you?” 

She spoke with feeling. Later on, thinking back over 
her own words, she realised that, at that moment, she must 
have been in some strange way convinced of the girl’s in¬ 
nocence, after a certain point, anyhow; while curiously 
enough—partly without doubt, because her husband had 
had so many affairs that one more or less scarcely seemed to 
matter, while it was everything on earth to this girl—she 
was almost overwhelmingly anxious to separate the thought 
of her from the thought of those nights in Paris, every¬ 
thing to do with them: the inevitably nasty jokes upon 
the disparity in the ages of the pair; the complaisance of 
the manager and servants, so horribly habituated to that 


230 


REPUTATION 


sort of thing; the passing of tips, which were more than 
half bribes; the innuendoes and speculations. 

“Why, she might be my own daughter,” she thought; 
and then: “What would I have felt if I had a daughter 
and a thing like this had happened to her ? ” 

Claudia had at last sat down; not with any idea of giv¬ 
ing in, talking things over, but rather—with her shoulders 
a little raised, her own arms pressed down on the hard arms 
of the wooden chair—with a feeling of gathering herself 
together, enfolding herself within herself, entrenching her¬ 
self against any softness in herself, as it were. 

“If you will tell me, I might be able to help you,” re¬ 
peated Lady Blagden. 

“I have nothing to tell.” 

“Anyhow, to be believed, that’s something-” 

“You can believe that I was not in that train,” said 
Claudia; and added, though she could not have said why— 
intent upon saving something which really had no value 
for her, the pretence of Blagden’s faithfulness, or even 
mo^e, her vanity, her face, as one might say—“at the time 
of the accident, anyhow,” feeling her way slowly through 
her own thoughts: certain of nothing apart from the fact 
that she could not confess to being—in her turn—fooled. 

“You have nothing more to say?” Lady Blagden rose 
and began buttoning up her long coat; her fingers busy 
with the fur about her throat, her eyes still upon Claudia 
with all the warmth and personal interest gone out of them. 
For nothing could have been more repellent, insolent, in 
respect to her own appeal, than the girFs whole attitude. 

“I suppose you cared for my husband—I must take it 
for granted that you cared, or you wouldn’t have done what 
you did. For it is perfectly clear, whatever happened 
afterwards, that you started off with him.” 

“I don’t see what that—caring—has to do with it,” mut¬ 
tered the other, without so much as raising her head. 

“I think I have a right to ask this much, anyhow—did 
you care for him?” 


REPUTATION 


231 


Lady Blagden could not have said why she asked the 
question with such insistence, pushing it home. After all, 
this strange, hard young thing was right. Apart from a 
rather silly sort of sentiment, caring had nothing whatever 
to do with the matter one way or another: while added to 
this was the realisation, borne down upon her with a feeling 
of intense weariness, that nothing of the sort could ever mat¬ 
ter again, that there was not even the bitter-sweet consola¬ 
tion of the return—and how many returns there had been! 
—left to her. 

And yet for all this she persisted. She did not greatly 
believe in Claudia’s innocence now; the girl had estranged 
her by her manner. What she wanted to make certain of 
was the fact that there was not this further insult to be 
put up with, the oddly intolerable slur upon her husband’s 
memory which came with the thought that this mere chit 
had been playing with him for the sake of adventure, the 
mere gratification of vanity, for—Oh, God only knew what! 
—but anything apart from love: the sort of love she her¬ 
self had felt for him; her pride in his strength, his virility, 
the enduring quality of his youth. 

11 1 insist that you shall tell me this. I won’t ask you any 
more. I’ll leave you alone after this; but you’ve got to 
tell me this. Did you, or did you not, love him?” she 
repeated. 

There was a moment’s pause, then Claudia raised her 
head and looked at her, sullenly almost savagely, for she, 
too, was being hurt. 

“Well, if you want to know, I didn’t,” she said; upon 
which Lady Blagden cried out upon her with sudden sharp¬ 
ness that it was more shame to her, and, turning, left the 
room. 

It was during the night that the sudden clear-cut 
thought, almost a certainty, came to her. “I don’t believe 
that she was there after all. I was right in that. If she 
was, she left him somewhere on the way—before Paris. 
That must have been it; I’m sure that was it. She wouldn’t 


232 


REPUTATION 


own to it, because she did care: enough anyhow not to be 
able to tolerate the thought of people knowing that he had 
picked up with someone else only just afterwards. ’ ’ 

The conviction was not quite so clear next morning, when 
her logical mind realised that there were at least three 
days still to be accounted for. If the girl had not been in 
Paris, where and with whom had she been? 

All the same, she wrote to Claudia, put her own idea be¬ 
fore her; asked her, at least, in justice to herself, to say if 
this was a true statement of the case; then, receiving no 
answer to her letter, decided that it was not, was, indeed, 
too fanciful for words, and gave it up. 

Five months passed, and Claudia was still living upon 
the money from her father, because there was nothing else 
for it. If he had written even once, she would not have so 
much minded; but as he did not write, merely forwarded 
it to Mrs. Spraggart, it hurt her more than any words 
could say. She could not get back her strength to any 
great extent; for the want of fresh air told upon her, and 
she worked hard, feverishly hard, at all sorts of petty 
articles and stories—every one of them moulded upon some¬ 
thing which she had read. She might have been really ill, 
fallen into that decline which Mrs. Spraggart was for ever 
predicting for her, if she had not been so fierce about it 
all; and as nurses say that an occasional fit of temper and 
crying is good exercise for a child, so this fierceness of 
Claudia’s fed her determination and kept her alive. 

Then, at the end of five months, an amazing thing hap¬ 
pened ; for Granny died and left her—with no sort of re¬ 
striction upon it—a sum of money which would bring her 
in a certain income of three hundred a year: “To my 
granddaughter Claudia, who, though she is a fool, is not 
such a fool as the others, and was the only one who ever 
stood up to me.” 

“Thank Heaven I can do as I like now!” said Claudia, 
and went to Madame Toussaud’s, the first outing of any 
sort since she had come to London; then home—though it 


REPUTATION 


233 


was many years before she thought of any place apart from 
the Rectory by this word—had chops ‘to’ her high tea, 
was wrung with home sickness, bitterly repenting that she 
had not been nicer to Granny, though if she had it was ten 
to one that she would not have got the money; thinking: 
4 ‘Well, somebody did remember me, after all!”—and wrote 
an article upon “Birthdays”; the birthdays of all of them; 
the wreaths they wore, and the familiar wild flowers of 
which they were made at the varying seasons of the year; 
the sense of age and dignity that came with a pudding of 
one ’s own choice for midday dinner; the sitting at the head 
of the table at tea crowned with flowers—those wreaths 
which were continually slipping over one eye as one carved 
the cake, to which every year lent the glory of an extra 
candle, so that one’s greatest desire was to reach the age 
of a hundred. 

It was a ridiculous piece of silliness. She thought this as 
she put it into an envelope and sent it off to the Cornhill 
Magazine, out of sheer light-heartedness and indifference 
to the question of stamps; for, of course, it would be re¬ 
turned with the usual insulting slip. 

But it was not returned. It was accepted, published and 
paid for; there was even a personal word of praise, the 
kindest that any editor ever penned. 

After all, Blagden had spoken the truth—lighting upon 
it with the wisdom of babes—and things did turn out 
right in the end. 











* 



















PART II 


September, 1902 



V 


CHAPTER I 


It was September, the second week of an unusually hot 
September, following upon a baking August, a fresher, yet 
no less grilling July. There were as yet very few people 
back in London, and only those people who had something 
special to do, fortunately the most interesting. 

Claudia Waring used to say, and each year it was the 
same: ‘ T wish to goodness I could stay on in the country, 

but there’s always something or other to drag me back to 
town!” In this particular early autumn it was the proofs 
of her new book; but if it had not been that, it would have 
been something else. As a matter of fact, by the end of the 
first week in September she was as restless as a hen which 
wants to lay an egg; bursting with ideas, longing for 
someone to impart them to. 

But, oh, it was hot! She never remembered it quite like 
this so late in the year. Coming back into London was 
like going into a bedroom where none of the windows had 
been -opened since the night before, she thought, yawning: 
then, '‘They might at least have aired it off a bit!” “they” 
referring to Providence; for she had been taught to believe 
in the Trinity, and this early teaching still held, in her 
phrasing if in nothing else. 

She half wished that she was not going to dine out, and 
yet that was the way in which London affected her. In the 
country she could spend every evening with a book; go to 
bed at ten o’clock, enjoy being alone; even sit alone in 
the dark garden after dinner, with nothing whatever to do. 
But once back in London there came this restless longing to 
move about among her fellow-creatures immediately after 
sunset; to dine somewhere with someone who really inter- 

237 


238 


REPUTATION 


ested her; and this intimacy of two in a crowd, at one of 
the less well known foreign restaurants was, to her mind, 
far better than any party. The very passage from her own 
house through the dimly lighted drives of Regent’s Park, 
with its strolling lovers, its mysterious voids of complete 
darkness—which might, for all one could see, stretch on 
and on without any sort of end—out into the swirl of 
traffic, pouring in a perpetual stream into Oxford Circus, 
gave her the acutest pleasure. She took it, indeed, as a 
swimmer takes the waves, with a long breath of gusto and 
excitement which had seldom failed her throughout long 
years in London; coming back to it as a mountaineer comes 
back to his own mountain air; feeling as though she could 
never again get enough of it. 

. Opposed to all this was the fact that she could remain 
indoors in perfect contentment during the greater part of 
the day; was free of that craving to get away into the open 
directly after breakfast, which spoilt her work in the 
country. 

She had only come up that morning, just in time for 
lunch; and yet she had been hard at it throughout the 
entire afternoon, as was plainly shown by a sheaf of galley 
proofs hanging over the back of a chair. 

It was getting dark now and she was curled up in the 
corner of a sofa close under the window, looking out into 
the silent square with its masses of trees, pinkish grey in 
the twilight, heavy with dust, jaded with the long heat of 
the summer. She knew them all: a few oaks, but far more 
elms; an acacia or so with disordered tresses sprayed out 
against the sky; and along the immediate edge of the gar¬ 
den, and again at the further side of the footpath, plane 
trees with their blotched and whitened stems. 

So long as the trees were still in leaf, she could not see 
the opposite houses; though even so she loved them far best 
in the winter, when a London tree is a peer with any other. 
At this hour, at this season, indeed, there was no sound, no 
sign of life. The whole square seemed completely deserted, 


REPUTATION 


239 


she herself as detached as though she were alone in the very 
depths of the country, or on an oasis in the desert. 

And yet how near she was to every variety of life, to 
places where almost every sort of language was spoken, 
every sort of life lived; in a town that was in itself a 
hundred towns, hung like a necklace of beads along the 
silvery thread of the river; the battle-ground, the play¬ 
ground and workshop of thousands, and yet as fantastic 
as though it had been tossed together for her amusement 
alone. There were the furze-decked heights of Hampstead 
with its Jews, its general preciousness; there was little 
Britain sliced out of Italy; Shoreditch and its Poles; Cur- 
zon Street cheek to jowl with Shepherd’s Market; Putney, 
Limehouse, Berkeley Square and Wapping; the sweet- 
chesnut groves of Greenwich Park; the woods of Highgate, 
and Petticoat Lane and Club Row, where they sell singing- 
birds on a Sunday morning, with hundreds of other cheek 
to jowl places—an amazing medley. 

Often enough she would amuse herself by visualising the 
most oddly assorted parts of London: picking them off the 
lesser, dangling strings of streets, which hung from that one 
silver thread; spreading them out before her; rearranging 
them here in her own quiet drawing-room. For that was 
the delight of it. She could get out into the whirl of life 
so quickly, and yet it was so quiet, ‘ ‘ the quietest square in 
London,” as someone had called it. 

It was odd too. And that pleased her, for she had never 
quite relinquished her girlish search for something differ¬ 
ent ; the sort of place one could come upon nowhere save in 
London, with its mysteries, its pruderies, its infinitely odd 
freaks and contradictions—to be reached by one street 
alone, and this a cul-de-sac. 

There were two openings out of the square itself into the 
snipped-off bit of a street, but they were both at either end 
of the same side. The remaining three sides, with their 
fronts looking into the square garden, and with no sort of 
road near them—apart from the quiet private road which 


240 


REPUTATION 


ran round it—were hemmed in at the back by the ends of 
the long gardens of other houses, having their own frontage 
to other streets, quite a long way from the square. 

Claudia’s house was at the opposite side to the opening, 
so that at both back and front of it were gardens, with 
trees and bouquets of flowering shrubs, syringa, laburnum 
and hawthorn, more particularly crimson hawthorn, mak¬ 
ing them gay throughout the entire spring-time. These 
gardens showed a variety of almost every sort of tree, and 
more than one copper beech. But there were no what she 
called “real” beeches, and she was glad of this; for she re¬ 
membered these trees, particularly at this time of year in 
their gold and copper and orange draperies, as one re¬ 
members the dressing-up clothes of one’s childhood’s days, 
and all one felt when one was wearing them; things which 
had seemed like the robes of kings and queens until they 
were worn at theatricals in which one took a disastrously 
presumptuous part, was painfully aware of having made a 
fool of oneself. 

They had been burning leaves in the long garden which 
almost touched the back of Claudia Waring’s house, and 
her back drawing-room was filled with the scent of it. She 
knew this garden so extraordinarily well that it was like a 
familiar face, upon which one grows to look for, to meet 
half-way, as it were, every change of expression. For she 
not only knew every tree in it, but she knew the exact time 
of year when the masses of purple irises might be expected 
to glow between the tree trunks, up against the verandah 
steps at the top; the week of the London pride; the week 
the wisteria was at its very best; the time when—but this 
came with the feeling of real summer in the air—cotton 
frocks and tunics would be hung out to dry in the place of 
knitted jerseys and stout stockings. 

When she first took her house it was winter, and the trees, 
always rather thin and lanky in that special garden, proved 
an ineffectual screen to what—in her desire to have every¬ 
thing perfect, not only in but about her new abode—had 


REPUTATION 


241 


struck her as a gross and unwarrantable offence; to wit the 
family washing of the people in Fellows Road, the people 
living in that particular house, whose garden, if one wished 
to look out of the window at all, it was impossible to ignore. 

She used to complain of it to her friends, who would look 
at her a little curiously and remark that in London every¬ 
one was accustomed to keep muslin curtains drawn over 
the windows of their back drawing-rooms: “Though the 
fact is they hardly go into them,” they added. To which 
Claudia Waring answered, with that hard intolerance which 
still showed itself at times, though very much less of late, 
that she for one liked her back room better than her front, 
and meant to work there, but could not put up with 
“dangling rags”; did not see why she should. 

“If they’re so poor or so mean, that they can’t pay a 
laundry, I ’ll pay it for them, that’s all, ’ ’ she said. 

But this had been ten years earlier. They were baby 
clothes then, mingled with other miscellaneous washing; 
and for several years they continued to be baby clothes; 
added to the more mature garments of a rapidly growing 
family. 

After a while she began to recognise certain things which 
had been put away for a time until a younger brother or 
sister was big enough for them; knew that washing, of 
which she had so often threatened to complain and never 
complained, as she knew the trees, the flowers in the garden, 
which grew each year more and more dishevelled, more and 
more oddly decorated, cut up into many smaller gardens 
with skew-whiffy beds—decorated with scallop shells some¬ 
where about this time of year, with a good many spades 
and buckets left littered about under the trees. 

The eldest boy in that other house, who must have been 
born just about the time she took her own, was ten years 
of age by now, with a passion for climbing trees; for 
sitting alone among the boughs brooding like an owl for 
long spaces of time, his eyes almost on a level with Claudia’s 
first-floor windows; descending from his heights to make 


242 


REPUTATION 


wild whooping forays among the others, three girls and one 
small and stolid boy who still refused to allow himself 
to be incited to anything very desperate, prove his right 
to be clothed in knickerbockers in the place of tunics, by 
any really desperate adventure. 

Of the small girls, the second of them—the eldest took 
life very seriously indeed—seemed determined to prove that 
her parents had made a mistake concerning her sex. It 
was not, as yet, the age of bloomers, but there had been 
times when she had discarded the pleated skirt of her fish¬ 
wife dress, climbing trees or beating the thicker belt of 
trees and sooty shrubs which lay round the edges of the 
garden—and were suspected of harbouring the most blood¬ 
thirsty of Indians—in her white frilled drawers; to the 
horror and distraction of the one small nurse girl, who, in 
the intervals of hanging out kindred garments on the line, 
shrieked upon the crew, or dragged them indoors to be 
‘‘made clean’’ for some meal or other. 

Sometimes Claudia Waring would meet them all on their 
way into Regent’s Park, shepherded by the anxious eldest 
sister, with her lordly brother marching on in front like a 
tramp with a trail of wives. 

He would take off his cap to Claudia, for they were on the 
most intimate terms by now; upon which the second girl 
would immediately follow suit with her hat, very much im¬ 
peded by her long hair and the elastic. 

4 ‘ She thinks that by taking off her hat she ’ll make herself 
into a boy,” explained her brother, with great contempt, 
one day, catching her at it; upon which there was an ani¬ 
mated wrangle, in the course of which his sister dared him 
to prove the contrary. 

“Anyhow, I knocked two of Morris’ teeth down his 
throat,” she said, as though this were enough; upon which 
the younger boy had opened his mouth as wide as possible 
and showed the gap, without the least appearance of bear¬ 
ing any sort of grudge, rather with an air of pride. 

“She would try and teach him to box,” explained the 


REPUTATION 


243 


eldest girl, “and of course he’s only very little, and he 
swallowed them both, and mother gave him oil. ’’ 

“But it wasn’t any good. We never-” 

“Be quiet, Nancy!” The third girl had had her head, 
so to speak, snapped off by her elder, to Claudia’s infinite 
relief, for she had experienced the passion for detail, dis¬ 
played in all such matters by the younger members of 
what she called “her family.” 

It was somewhere about a week after this that Claudia 
Waring had been conscious of a rustle in the elm tree 
outside her bedroom window, quite early one morning, 
when she had not yet finished dressing, and looking out 
saw the strangest bird climbing laboriously and danger¬ 
ously towards the top of it. 

It was a damp morning, and the glass was dulled with 
moisture in such a way that everything looked oddly dis¬ 
torted and out of proportion, so that the figure in the tree 
overhanging Claudia’s own small back yard, over-topping 
all the others in the adjoining garden, might have been al¬ 
most anything on earth; was, indeed, most like that pecu¬ 
liarly disconsolate looking species of monkey, which is 
distinguished by an uneven shock of hair falling into its 
eyes. 

It was not until she had opened her window and leant out 
in her dressing-gown that she realised that it was the boy- 
girl of the neighbouring family, and called out, panic- 
stricken by the dogged persistence of the small creature, 
now well among the smaller boughs, climbing on and on 
with upraised eyes. 

“Vi! What are you doing there? You must come 
down at once. At once; do you hear me?” 

For a moment the climber had hung suspended, glower¬ 
ing at Claudia from beneath her ragged tresses; then shook 
them back, loosened one hand from the bough above her 
head, spat on it, took a firmer grasp, and raised one foot 
to the level of it, chanting: 

“I’m a boy—I’m a boy! Don’t you see I’m a boy? 



244 


REPUTATION 


I’ve cut off my hair—cut off my hair—and if I’m not a 
hoy I’m a monkey, so there, there, there! ’ ’ 

So that was it; the ridiculous child had cut off her hair, 
and heavens, in what a fashion, with no single tress any¬ 
where near the same length. As she crouched panting 
upon the newly-achieved bough, Claudia was at last able 
to take her in, in all her dishevelment; clad only in her 
drawers, sagging and suspenderless stockings, and some¬ 
thing that looked ignominiously like stays; her small, 
peaky white face streaked with black; shivering so that 
Claudia could see the bough upon which she had seated 
herself shake; would have sworn that she heard the sound 
of chattering teeth. 

'‘You’re not a boy,” she cried, interrupting her in a 
tentative movement towards a yet higher bough. “You’re 
not a boy, because boys fasten their trousers with braces, 
don’t button them on to stays.” She had realised the 
cruelty of the taunt, but all the same it was the only thing 
which struck her as possibly effective. “Besides, no boy 
would be such a fool as to trust elm boughs no thicker than 
his wrist. So as you are not a boy, and I’ve never seen 
anything in the least like you before, you must be a monkey 
escaped from the Zoo.” 

This got home, there was no doubt about it; for the small 
figure hung motionless, suspended, head thrust forward, 
clinging to what there was left of a trunk; while Claudia, 
remembering her own youth, realised the child’s mind 
gathered together upon itself over the question, which left 
no room for anything else: 

“Am I really a monkey; am I really and truly a 
monkey ?’ ’ 

“That being the case,” Claudia went on, speaking very 
loudly and decidedly, “you must come down at once or 
I’ll be obliged to shoot you—I have my revolver here; you 
know I have my revolver, don’t you?”—she had, indeed, 
an idiotic wooden dud for holding three pencils, given her 
by her parlour-maid that Christmas, and kept well in evi- 


REPUTATION 


245 


dence upon her dressing-table, until such times as she 
could take it away with her and lose it. The whole Joyce 
family knew it, had played with it innumerable times, 
even come over to borrow it upon special occasions; but 
Claudia, conscious of the power of tradition, was perfectly 
sure of the effect, as, reaching behind her for it now, she 
found the thing, pointed it, and went on: 

“So if you don’t start to come down from that tree at 
once, very slowly and carefully, for, of course, the Zo¬ 
ological Garden people would much rather have their 
property returned to them alive than dead, I shall shoot. 
Now—one, two, three. No! No, you needn’t put up your 
hands—monkeys don’t!” 

Leaning far out of the window, regardless of her own 
flowing tresses, of who saw her, Claudia had followed the 
descent with agonised eyes, scarcely able to breathe until a 
safer level was reached. 

It was when the child was almost at the last bough that 
her father came down the garden, plucked her from it, 
and administered a sound spanking upon the begrimed 
garments. 

As the small girl ran off howling to the house, he glanced 
up and met Claudia’s eyes. 

“I was terrified that she would fall and break her neck,” 
she said, and he answered: 

“Yes, she’s a terror, isn’t she?” glancing up at her so 
frankly that, later on, she was surprised when the eldest 
boy remarked that his father said it was 11 queer of her to 
lean out of the window like that, with her hair down; add¬ 
ing, benevolently, that he himself didn’t mind at all; held 
the opinion that people looked awfully stuck up and silly 
with their hair togged up with pins. 

All the same—‘ ‘ queer! ’ ’ ClaudM hated the word, said 
that it marked people, the sort of people who were shocked 
at almost anything. She would not have been surprised 
at it from the mother, whom she always thought of as a 
ninny and useless, but from the father she had somehow or 


246 


REPUTATION 


other expected something better. Oh, well, it only made 
it seem more amazing than ever that the children should 
be what they were—more like the offspring of some wild 
Indian chief than anything else; particularly Vi with her 
jet black locks—cropped into some sort of order when 
next she saw her—her small pointed face and immense 
eyes. Queer! Come to queerness, there was, after all, 
nothing on earth one-half so queer as the fact that people 
should have children and not know how on earth to look 
after them, thought Claudia; and added to herself, in a 
savage way she had: ‘‘Anyhow, the kid wouldn’t be here 
now if I hadn’t hung out of the window, risked looking 
queer. Them and their queerness! 

“I’d like to adopt the whole pack. And I’ve a good 
mind to do it. Anyhow, I could look after them better 
than that poor feckless mother of theirs. I’d eat my hat 
if I couldn’t. I’d make a contract with Jaeger the first 
thing—see that they were properly clothed anyhow.” 
That’s what she said, boring all her friends over those 
ridiculous children; working herself up into a panic when¬ 
ever one of another of them disappeared for any length of 
time, as so often happened; to reappear strolling languidly 
in the garden, more peaked-faced and white than ever, 
from the effect of one of their innumerable and devastating 
colds, or the rack of croup which cast a peculiarly dark 
and constant shadow over Morris’ young life; the whole 
thing being entirely due, or so Claudia said, to the way in 
which they were allowed to play about in that damp garden, 
too ridiculously clad, in all sorts of weather; resenting it 
the more in that during those intervals she was totally un¬ 
able to get on with her work, remaining in a state of fu¬ 
rious amazement and rage at the fact that she herself had 
not been chosen for the children’s mother, in the place of 
“that poor slummikin’ thing,” as she would say, going 
back to the native vocabulary of her own village. 

During the first few years she used to see the mother 
from time to time, calling to the children from her back 


REPUTATION 


247 


verandah steps, or running down the garden to speak to 
them; a rather untidy, red-haired little woman with the 
aimless, flitting movements of a bird and a peculiarly ugly 
Cockney accent, garnished with gentility. The father was 
different. It was quite evident that he had married be¬ 
neath him. ‘ ‘ Poor wretch! ’ * thought Claudia, for she 
rather pitied married men; though she could not have said 
why, for she had no opinion of men anyhow. 

She used to ask the children to tea, and they had im¬ 
mense fun together; but it never even entered into her 
head to call upon their mother. Indeed, after a while, as 
her appearances became more and more infrequent—en¬ 
tirely ceasing from the birth of Morris, who unexpectedly 
remained the youngest—she counted her out; almost for¬ 
got about her; was rather impatient of any reminder of 
her existence from her own children. 

There had, indeed, been times, especially during that last 
winter, when they were all sitting round the fire between 
lights while she told them stories, that they had really 
seemed to belong to Claudia herself; and she never quite 
forgot the thrill wdiich had come to her, the touch of 
Morris * small fat hand stroking her cheek as he lay curled 
upon her knee, with the cooing words: “I wish you was 
my mother, ’ '—the cold douche of the drawl which fol¬ 
lowed it—“ 'cause you always ’s such a lot o’ chocolates 
in your ’ouse." 

It had been delightful; it had been ridiculous; taking up 
a great deal more of her thoughts than anything, apart 
from her work, had any right to do. She had even put off 
going away excepting at such set times as the family was 
also from home; while her very first action on her return, 
even from a Saturday to Monday, was to run upstairs and 
wave from her window. 

The whole thing had been going on since Edward, the 
eldest boy, was four years of age—six years, six whole 
years out of her life—and now she was back again from 
her summer holiday, and had not so much as entered her 


248 


REPUTATION 

back drawing-room, dimmed by the long mnslin curtains 
which now hung straight across the entire window. 

For just before she left a terrible thing had happened, a 
bolt from the blue; falling upon her with all the greater 
force, almost stupefying her in that it came from a quar¬ 
ter from whence she could have least expected it from 
whence, indeed, no one on earth could have expected it, 
save those who know life well enough to be for ever on 
their guard against the incredible—in the shape of a letter 
from the children's mother, “that poor little Mrs. Joyce," 
very carefully written upon rather common paper, and 
expressing the plain wish of both her husband and herself 
that Miss Waring should have no further intercourse what¬ 
ever with their children. 

When her maid handed her the unstamped letter, told 
her who it was from, Claudia's first question had been as 
to whether one of the children had brought it; and on be¬ 
ing answered in the negative, she had laid it down, gone 
on with her work, thinking that any time would do for a 
letter from such an entirely unimportant person. Then, 
seized with a sudden panic that one of the children might 
be ill, she herself summoned to the death-bed, she had 
picked it up and torn it open; read it again and again, 
holding it away from her, turning it over and over to make 
certain of the three blank sides. For though it was short 
and clear, conclusive enough to master at a single glance, 
she could not believe the evidence of her own eyes. 

By this time, twenty years after that one great essay at 
adventure—there had been others since, but tamer, of a 
lesser magnitude, and of too recent a date to have gained to 
themselves any real importance or glamour—Claudia War¬ 
ing was a celebrity; keenly aware of it too, enjoying every 
moment of it; though she herself would often remark, in 
her cool, laughing way, on the very thin barrier lying be¬ 
tween notoriety and fame of the easier sort. 

“Shake us all up loose in a bag, with all our qualities— 
which are, after all, much the same, only differently sorted 


REPUTATION 


249 


—and you wouldn’t know the other from which,” she 
would say, with a never-failing sense of the piquancy of 
the whole thing. For though her work was good—and of 
course it was amazingly good, and she knew it, full of 
vitality and knowledge of life—how much of the general 
interest was, so to say, flavoured by the romance which 
hung about her own life; how much, indeed, did that very 
knowledge of life, which was her special strong card, owe 
to the fact that people had always been so ready to con¬ 
fide in her? “Of course I can tell you, because I know 
you’ll understand, not be shocked.” That’s what they 
would say; pouring out tales which, though she was scrupu¬ 
lously careful not to use them, could not fail to enrich 
the soil upon which they fell. 

There were moments, of course, very rare in these days 
—for what had threatened to be a black, or, worse still, a 
fool’s cap, had grown into something very like a halo— 
of dreadful soreness, when she was irrational enough to 
wonder how people could possibly think of her in the way 
they did; but on the whole the only person to disturb her 
was that same familiar imp of her girlhood days which, 
even yet, had its own place at the back of her conscious¬ 
ness, raising its eyebrows when she made certain sorts of 
speeches—that about notoriety and fame, for instance. 

Still the fact remained; her name was known pretty well 
everywhere, her books had been translated into all the 
European languages; people were wild to meet her, more 
particularly Americans, who seemed to wish to shake her 
hand beyond that of any living person, apart from their 
own President. She had even been to America, lectured 
upon her own books, herself in general, which gave her the 
greatest possible pleasure, however much she might make 
fun of it, of the crowds which besieged her, begged for her 
signature; for though we all love talking about ourselves, it 
is few of us indeed who can get anyone to pay to listen to 
us. 

And now to be insulted by the untidy, red-headed wife 


250 


REPUTATION 


of an insurance inspector, she, Claudia Waring —the 
Claudia Waring —“our Claudia,” as more than one West¬ 
ern paper had called her, in a frenzy of adoption. It was, 
indeed, beyond everything. 

“It has happened before,” said the sub-imp; and indeed 
it had, was branded into her so that, for all her self- 
confidence, there were places in her life upon which she 
did not dare to lay a finger, wounds—those inflamed and 
poisonous wounds which scar one’s own self-respect—that 
would never altogether heal. But all the same she an¬ 
swered it fiercely: “Never, never like this before, never 
from a person like this.” 

For what could an insurance person’s wife, any clerk’s 
wife—Claudia Waring was a snob when she was angry, 
exactly like her grandmother, a vulgar snob, but happily 
at no other time, and always conscious and ashamed of it— 
know of her, her life, her girlhood? A woman who, back 
in the old Rectory days, would have been spoken of as 
a person, nothing more or less. 

Oh yes, of course it had happened before. It was bound 
to happen with anyone like Claudia, who drew the eye, the 
affection, or dislike of everyone she came in contact with, 
for your really attractive woman is never forgiven; while 
there had been chance meetings with aunts and uncles and 
cousins, in which the uncles looked the opposite way in the 
greatest possible confusion, while the aunts—and Lady 
Mannering proved herself a champion of this, not content 
with staring, but getting herself elected upon the committee 
of one of the very first of the professional women’s clubs, 
for the mere pleasure of black-balling her niece, or so 
Claudia said—gazed blankly through her, as her mother 
and grandmother had done at the time of her dramatic and 
brazen re-appearance at her own home; and the cousins, 
though they did not look at her openly at all—looked, 
indeed, in every other direction, awkwardly enough too— 
turned, more particularly the younger, and quite inevitably 
the men, and stared after her. 


CHAPTER II 


All this was now, however, as Claudia herself would 
have said, back in the dark ages! She had poised herself 
since then, made her own position for herself, given an un¬ 
usually solid and well sustained impression of her own 
personality, was not, with her steady glance, her air of 
imperturbable self-possession, at all the sort of woman 
whom anyone would care to slight. People might still say 
things, as they said them in regard to the Joyce children, 
when Claudia was a little too aggravating with that “If 
they were mine”—and some irritated matron remarked 
upon the inevitable perfection of old maids ’ children. 

“Oh, well, as to the old maid part of it, I don’t know 
about that, if everything one hears is true.” But all the 
same, they did not say it to her face; never had done, and 
it’s strange how little one knows of the real texture of any¬ 
thing that is said about oneself behind one’s back. 

And now, this Mrs. Joyce! It was so unbelievable that, 
after the first shock, which brought home the truth as it so 
often does, Claudia had persuaded herself that it must be 
something else. Perhaps the woman was huffed because 
she had not been to call upon her. Oh, well, better late 
than never; at least, she supposed so, with a person like 
that. Anyhow, she could not afford to lose the children. 

She reached this definite determination after a spoilt 
morning’s work and tasteless lunch; and, hardly able to 
wait until a decently formal hour, sallied forth, very well 
turned out as usual, for she had a passion for perfection 
in line, so far as the ugly fashion allowed, for every sort 
of detail; even more carefully turned out than usual, per¬ 
haps, curiously enough remembering Lady Blagden— 


252 REPUTATION 

though why then of all times ?—the effect that she had upon 
her. 

She experienced a moment or so of difficulty in finding 
the house, despite her intimate knowledge of the back 
garden; for the streets were oddly planned, or, rather, not 
planned, thrown together, while she had forgotten the num¬ 
ber on the letter; might have missed it altogether had it 
not been for a familiar spotted horse, which she had often 
seen tethered to the dummy handle of her own front door, 
prancing at a perilous angle half-way up the steps. 

The maid, too, was recognisable, though only just so, 
shorn of the wide grin with which she usually answered 
Claudia’s nod; her whole expression a curious compound of 
dismay and excitement when she saw who it was standing 
at the door; mumbling something to the effect that she 
would “see” in answer to the enquiry as to whether her 
mistress was at home, and leaving the visitor standing upon 
the doorstep while she scurried away; showing an abject 
anterior of gaping skirt and blouse, down-trodden shoe, 
red heel and undarned stocking. 

“Why on earth doesn’t the woman insist upon her 
mending herself, and washing herself, and pinning her 
cap on straight by way of a change?” thought Claudia, 
pulling herself together with the criticism, the remem¬ 
brance of her own trim maids. For something in the girl’s 
face, like the blatant headlines of a Sunday paper, had 
made her feel ill at ease and angry. 

There was a murmur of voices and then the maid re¬ 
appeared, having garnered a clean apron from somewhere 
or other on the way, asked her to ‘ ‘ Please step in, ’ ’ and led 
her across the hall and along a passage—all very untidy, 
with evidence of the children in every inch of chipped 
skirting board—opened a door at the end, and announced 
her in a hushed and sobered voice. 

It was one of the rooms that looked down to the garden 
and Claudia’s first idea was that she was glad of this. 
There was the French window and the balcony and the 


REPUTATION 


253 


flight of steps which she could just see from her own win¬ 
dow, and up which the children might come running at 
any moment: mercifully, for she was sure that the visit 
was going to prove almost intolerably boring. 

She told herself this at the top of herself, in that way 
she had; exactly as she told herself: “Of course the sort 
of woman who would be lying upon a sofa,” advancing 
with outstretched hand, apologising rather too profusely 
for not having called before; going on to say something 
about being so fond of the children—though even then she 
could not bring herself to use the words “your children”— 
knowing them so well, but being so dreadfully occupied; 
really, with a little laugh, as though putting herself at 
Mrs. Joyce’s mercy, so incorrigibly lazy in respect to social 
duties. All this with the growing consciousness of her 
own hand stuck out untouched in front of her, the silly 
look of the stuffed grey suede; all mixed up with the 
recollection that the only thing she had not admired about 
Lady Blagden was her black kid gloves. 

“Won’t you sit down? I must apologise for not getting 
up, but I am not able to move about much now,” said the 
woman on the sofa, very gently, taking no notice whatever 
of her visitor’s apologies; not from rudeness either, that 
was clear, but because she was intent upon something else. 

It was queer how, realising this, Claudia’s thoughts re¬ 
verted once again to the memory of her own behaviour in 
regard to Lady Blagden, years, oh years and years, cen¬ 
turies ago—and why was it all cropping up now?—with 
the plain picture of herself, sullen, aggressive and gauche, 
not so much as offering her a chair. 

“I got your letter,” she said as she seated herself, lean¬ 
ing forward with a feeling as though her best smile were 
rather too tightly wired upon her face; thinking of it 
because she was a writer with the habit of such sharp com¬ 
parisons—as a sort of florist’s spray, pretending to be care¬ 
less and really so irrevocably, so cruelly fixed, “and I felt 
that the only thing now was to come round and see you my- 


254 


REPUTATION 


self, make my apologies. I’m afraid I must have seemed 
unforgivably rude, but believe me I did not mean it. We 
writers-” 

“No—not rude,” said Mrs. Joyce. 

The blind was half down. “People of that sort always 
live in darkened rooms, it’s the thing,” thought Claudia 
angrily, hitting out, as it were. The window itself was 
divided lengthwaj^s into three by a rather unusual breadth 
of woodwork, so that the division nearest the sofa cast a 
shadow over the lower half of Mrs. Joyce’s neck and 
face, throwing into relief the narrow, transparently white 
forehead, the wide-opened, red-brown eyes, rather like a 
hare’s; the red hair, very thick, and smooth now for there 
was no wind across the pillow as there had been in the 
garden. 

“Iam afraid you will think it narrow-minded of us, my 
husband and myself,” she went on, after a long pause, fol¬ 
lowing upon that simple and significant, “No, not rude”— 
“and of course I know that writers like yourself must look 
on things like that so very, very differently to what we 
ordinary people—people who are not clever—do. ’ ’ 

“What sort of things?” asked Claudia gently, beaten 
by something in the timid sincerity of the words, the too 
prominent brown eyes, which never wavered or left her 
face, pinning down her own glance to meet them. 

“Well, the sort of things you write about. I and my 
husband have read your books and enjoyed them very 
much—at least most of them. No one could help seeing 
how clever they are. Only we didn’t know then, and— 
and—of course, real life is different, isn’t it ? It must be.” 

“Well—oh, well, I always rather hoped it wasn’t,” said 
Claudia, with a gleam of humour coming to her rescue. 

“But in things like—like that. Everyone knows, every¬ 
one must acknowledge that in real life, in things of that 
sort, there must be certain standards. It isn’t the same as 
in a book, and it’s no good saying that it is.” There was 
a sort of fixed obstinacy in the gentle voice. 


REPUTATION 


255 


“What sort of things do you mean?'’ 

A crimson flush crossed the invalid’s unnaturally white 
brow; the shadow had shifted a little, showed her nose 
now, a silly peaky nose—but there was no sort of comfort 
in that for Claudia Waring, though she had always dis¬ 
liked women with thin peaked noses. “Love and doing 
one’s duty—and—and other people’s husbands,” she said 
in a low voice irredeemably cockney, and yet in some way 
pleasant, even refined. “We didn’t know, you see,” she 
went on, “we were both so grateful to you for being so 
good to the children. I can’t get about myself, I can’t 
play with them as I would like to—and that’s a dreadful 
loss; although I know I oughtn’t to complain so long as I 
have them all round me. But I was so glad that they 
should be happy, having some sort of amusement; and so 
proud of you taking such a fancy to them, for, of course, 
I knew who you were. We’re not very well off, and my 
husband’s busy all day; and, of course, with only one serv¬ 
ant they can’t get half the attention that I’d like them to 
have. It seemed such an advantage for them to be friends 
with someone who was really cultivated—but, of course, 
that was before I knew, before either of us knew.” 

“Before you knew what?” 

“When—well, when I thought that people just wrote 
about the things that happen in novels, out of their head. ’ ’ 

“Oh!” 

“Then my husband heard about—about—you know what. 
At first we would neither of us believe it. I thought that 
you must be nice when you were so fond of children. But 
my husband made very careful enquiries—he had to, you 
know, because of the children; it wasn’t really prying, he 
could never do that. And he began to hear more, and 
what with putting two and two together, and remembering. 
. . Mrs. Joyce’s voice dropped so that Claudia could 
scarcely catch her words, and seeing her turn her head 
aside, was so on edge expecting the very worst that she 
could have screamed with laughter and relief when she 


256 


REPUTATION 


realised something about “leaning out of the window in 
your dressing-gown, with your hair down and all”—did 
laugh, lightly, with her: 

“Oh, is that what it’s all about?” and so slightingly 
that the little woman upon the sofa turned her head and 
looked at her straight, reddening with indignation. 

“Oh, you may laugh.” 

“Well, come now, isn't it funny?” 

“In itself, yes; but not with everything else, everything 
that has gone before. I know it doesn’t sound much, ’ ’ the 
slight gust of huffiness had gone out of the steady voice, 
“but things like that do show what people are like; all the 
little things-” 

“Goodness gracious, woman, don’t you realise that your 
own child was within an ace of having her neck broken ? ’ ’ 
cried Claudia; but it was all of no use, for Mrs. Joyce went 
on as unswervingly as though she were some pilgrim with 
his eyes fixed upon the promised land, regardless of the 
morass around his feet. 

“Yes, I know. But don’t you see—what with one thing 

and another-It seems a dreadful thing to say, but 

my husband tells me that men are continually going to 
your house, and-” 

“Why, of course there are men coming to my house, 
it’s not a convent,” said Claudia; and added grimly: 
“But I can assure you it’s not a brothel, either.” 

“Oh—oh, you mustn’t say things like that! You 

oughtn’t to say things like that! As if we could ever- 

Mrs. Joyce broke off, her face flooded with a sudden wave 
of scarlet, while Claudia Waring thought: “Just like all 
these sort of people, it’s the putting things into plain words 
that scares them.” Though her contempt was, for all 
that, on the top of herself; for whatever anyone may say, 
there are certain things that no one has any business to 
put into words; any more than one has any business to 
undress in public, innocent as undressing in general 
may be. 






REPUTATION 


257 


“Now I’ve seen you I can never believe—never, 

never-” Mrs. Joyce’s eyes were on her face again, 

candid and kind, “that you weren’t—one never ought to 
judge others in those sort of things—and though, of 
course, it must be true, for my husband has some very in¬ 
fluential friends in the city, who know all about the aristoc¬ 
racy and all that—but that you weren’t really and truly 
more sinned against than sinning.” 

Claudia was silent, she wanted to say ‘ 1 Thank you! ’ ’ she 
wanted to laugh, for was it not all the purest melodrama 
“the aristocracy,” “more sinned against than sinning”? 
But for all that she could not; and after all this was one 
of the things she herself had always held to, against the lot 
of them: 11 Sincerity is never really ridiculous ’ ’—inscrib¬ 

ing it in American albums with her signature attached. 

“I told Mr. Joyce that writers looked on those sort of 
things quite differently, I mean about your hair down your 
back and all that,” went on the little woman, “and I do 
know more about literature and literary people than he 
does, though perhaps I oughtn’t to say so, on account of 
being a teacher before I married. But what he says, and 
of course he’s right, is that as our children are going to be 
ordinary people, 1 plain citizens’ he calls them, and not 
writers, it’s them we’ve got to think of. And, of course, 
about that other thing, there couldn’t be two opinions. 
You yourself must realise that.” 

“What other thing?” asked Claudia, determined to nail 
her to it, thinking, “She’ll never dare to put it into words: 
those sort never do,” mistakenly though, for Mrs. Joyce 
did put it plainly too, though not quite so plainly as 
Granny had done, and with every bit as steady a glance: 

“Running away with a married man.” 

“Oh, now we’ve got it! And have you any idea how 
long ago it was, how long it lasted ? ” 

“I don’t think that makes any difference, does it?” 

There was a long silence. And then as Claudia rose to 
go, with a feeling as though she had stiffened from sitting 



258 


REPUTATION 


still for a very long time in one position, the red-haired 
woman put out her hand. 

“I’m very sorry,” she said, “and I believe I could trust 
you not to do the children any harm, not to mean to, any¬ 
how. I didn’t think I could ever trust a person like you, 
because it always seems so mean—that taking away an¬ 
other woman’s husband, but writers are different.” 

“I wasn’t a writer then, I was barely eighteen,” said 
Claudia, speaking with some difficulty, for her lips were 
as stiff as the rest of her. 

“All the same, I’m sure that you didn’t realise what it 
meant, and that you wouldn’t deliberately do or say any¬ 
thing to hurt the children. ’ ’ 

11 Good Lord, no! What on earth do you think I’m made 
of?” 

“And if only it wasn’t that my husband has to be away 
from home so continually—why, he’s often not back home 
until ten o ’clock at night, and there’s no one else. ’ ’ 

“I’m afraid I don’t understand-” “What on earth 

that’s got to do with it,” Claudia was about to add when 
the other woman forestalled her. 

“Don’t you see, I know I can’t live very long; and when 
I’m gone the children will have nobody apart from the 
friends they’ve made for themselves to teach them any¬ 
thing. If you were a mother you’d understand.” 

“I suppose I would,” said Claudia, and got herself out 
of the room, and from thence out of the house, somehow or 
other, though she did not quite know how; conscious as she 
moved down the passage of the sound of a persistent and 
vigorous kicking upon the panelling of one of the doors, 
presumedly locked, and Morris’ voice, upraised in a loud 
persistent wail: “I want ’er, I want ’er, I want my lady; 
I want ’er—I want ’er—I want ’er-” 

That had been close upon two months before, for she had 
left London a good fortnight earlier than usual this year. 
There had been one note from the children—signed by 
them all, even by Morris with plain signs of his hand being 




REPUTATION 


259 


held and racing off on a tangent of its own at the last “s” 
—tied to the centre handle of her front door with a ragged 
bit of tape, and containing the words: “Never mind, we 
love you. ’ ’ But that was all, while the children saluted her 
gravely without a word whenever they chanced to meet, 
evidently bound by some promise not to speak. 

Once she had glanced back and seen Morris dragging 
away from his eldest sister’s grasp, kissing his hand to her, 
with those loud kisses that she knew so well; but she never 
looked again. It was all ridiculous, of course, too utterly 
ridiculous; but, for all that, she meant to play fair. And 
now she was home again and had not so much as looked out 
of the window. 

People had often said to her: “You’ll have to put those 
precious children in a book, Claudia,” and she had an¬ 
swered, rather grandly: 

“Thank you. There are some things that I can keep 
sacred to myself, though you mightn’t believe it.” But 
now she thought, “Well, I might as well make something 
out of it anyhow”—and she had recompensed herself be¬ 
fore in this fashion—seeing the children and the small, set, 
middle-class mother very much as a far later biographer 
saw Queen Victoria: to be impressed upon others as a 
person of quite ridiculous limitations, and yet a person to 
be reckoned with and respected in spite of, or perhaps be¬ 
cause of, these very limitations, strengthening the whole 
fabric as they undoubtedly did; seeing the drawing-room 
at Number Five, Fellows Road, as the setting to it all; her¬ 
self, no less plainly and certainly no more self-indulgently 
than the rest, as part of the puppet show and not in the 
very least its manipulator; thinking: “It might make a 
story, I don’t believe it would run to a book.” Though, 
for all that, she did not use it because she was really so 
much more decent than she seemed, even to herself, to be. 


CHAPTER III 


Oh, well, it was no good picking over the past; that past 
which seemed, only just lately, to have become a trifle 
mouldy; like clothes that have been shut away in an air¬ 
less cupboard and lost their freshness; have that queer 
smell of anything that has touched the human body, then 
been laid aside, a mimic scent of death. 

Still, all the freshness and keen joy of her usual return 
to town was absent. It was always the same old thing, 
happening in the same old way, she thought, as she raised 
herself languidly and went into her room where the house¬ 
maid had laid out her evening dress upon the bed; pale 
maize silk and lace, with a skirt skin tight about the hips, 
extravagantly wide and fluted round the hem; a bodice 
with small puffed sleeves which were the very newest 
fashion. 

What an idiot she was to go on and on worrying about 
dress, spreading herself as a peacock spreads its tale; her 
whole soul swaying towards that whisper as she came into 
a room—“Miss Waring, Claudia Waring, you know. . . . 
Oh, of course, but everyone knows . . . the famous novel¬ 
ist-” and then—“Such a frightfully romantic history!” 

—swaying towards it; making a procession of one for it; 
and yet never ceasing to ridicule it. 

And what endless repetition it all was. Now just at the 
end of the Boer War girls said “frightfully’’ where they 
used to say “awfully,” and the modern girl was regarded 
with just as much horror as she had been when Mrs. Lynn 
Linton wrote of her in eighteen hundred and sixty-eight, 
at a time when Claudia herself was only fourteen: “The 
girl of the period has done away with all such moral muffi- 
ness as consideration for others, or regard for counsel and 

260 



REPUTATION 


261 


rebuke . . . Nothing is too extraordinary and nothing too 
exaggerated for her vitiated taste. . . . She has blunted 
the fine edges of feeling so much that she cannot under¬ 
stand why she should be condemned for an imitation of 
form which does not include imitation of fact . . . the pro¬ 
fession of the lovely ladies of St. John’s Wood . . . she 
cannot be made to see that modesty of appearance and vir¬ 
tue ought to be inseparable, and that no good girl can afford 
to appear bad. . . . The girl of the period ... a creature 
who dyes her hair and paints her face as the first article of 
her personal religion; whose sole idea of life is plenty of 
fun and luxury; and whose dress is the object of such 
thought and intellect as she possesses.” 

Claudia had listened to all this with scarcely a note of 
variation throughout three and a half decades; for she had 
noted it with contempt at the age of five when Mama had 
said “Little girl’s did not behave like that when I was a 
child.” During the war she had heard it declared: “Our 
girls have behaved so wonderfully, mark my words for it, 
they will be different after this, much less frivolous and 
vain, much more like the girls we knew (or we were) 
when we were young.” But they were nothing of the sort; 
and though she was to hear the same thing said, and with 
far more reason, after a far more devastating war, the girl 
of the period was unchanged, as youth is for ever un¬ 
changed : the most conservative thing on earth. 

“I’m like a hiccough or a stutter or something of that 
sort,” thought Claudia, brushing her hair until it shone, 
doing it up—for all her pessimism—with the greatest pos¬ 
sible care and exactitude, just as she had always done it 
with that affectation of simplicity, disregarding the fashion 
of Regency dips and immense padded puffs over either ear. 
“People are beginning to take me for granted; very soon 
they’ll get tired of me, then they’ll forget me. 

She powdered her face carefully, dusting it over lightly 
with a handkerchief afterwards; for one did not yet care 
—despite all that was said—to let everyone know to what 


262 


REPUTATION 


the absence of shine was attributable; nor did one powder 
one’s nose in public. Looking back over it all, twenty 
years later, Claudia thought: “We were more hypocritical 
then; though in some ways it was a good thing, it helped us 
to a sort of moral deportment, like spiritual stays. ’ ’ 

Anyhow, it was only fair that she should make the best of 
herself when that handsome boy Tony Fellowes, with only 
one night’s leave, had dedicated the whole evening to tak¬ 
ing her out to dine and “do a theatre.” Not for the first 
time either, for she had had some wonderful times with 
Tony during the peace rejoicings in June, and again when 
he had actually lured her up from the country for the 
long deferred Coronation—“Coronations”—“Sops in 
Wine”—her imagination, which still made such fantastic 
pictures for itself, recalling the old country names for 
carnations, saw the splendour of the court robes as just so 
many deeply crimson crushed carnations; while her mind’s 
nose—and why not a mind’s nose as well as a mind’s eye? 
—sniffed their drenching sweetness, just as she had sniffed 
the pungent horse-like smell of Centaurs “in the upper 
glens of Pelion, ” or so it had seemed; actually in the room 
which she shared with Francie in the Rectory of Leesden- 
cum-Leesgrove. 

She seldom confided these fancies to Tony, for it only 
upset him, making him feel that there were all sorts of 
things which he ought to know and didn’t; so that he would 
look at her in the way Pickles used to do when she had hid¬ 
den something for him to find and he was at loss for the 
scent—deprecatingly, entreatingly, as though she were a 
sort of god—and say: “You’re so frightfully clever, you 
know; it beats me how you can put up with a fellow like 
me. Though anything to do with polo ponies, well, there 
—I don’t want to buck, but I do know something about 
polo ponies.” 

She never confided her fancies to any of her young 
friends, indeed; and it was strange how she could so com¬ 
pletely put aside an element which took so large a part in 


REPUTATION 


263 


her life as the fantastic; for the greater number of her 
friends were young, mere boys and girls: some of her own 
nephews and nieces the most ardent of all her admirers; 
Maude’s girls; and Gertrude’s odd, awkward boy of seven¬ 
teen, for Gertrude had married Mr. Ashton almost as soon 
as Claudia removed herself and her glamour from the 
neighbourhood. “Glamour, yes that’s it,” she said to her¬ 
self now, glancing at her own reflection in the glass, add¬ 
ing : “You old ass, you! But all the same, it’s true. 

None of her sisters knew that she knew their children; 
and somehow or other it had just happened, was none of 
her seeking, for she was staunch and proud there. Though 
how was it possible to repulse the young things when they 
declared that she was the only grown-up to whom they 
could ever tell anything ?—looking at her with such inno¬ 
cent eyes of wonder and adoration: “I’d give anything 
on earth to be like you, Claude”—they called her that, 
scorning the word “aunt” with its dowdy, middle-aged 
fustiness—“so frightfully clever an’ all. And such, oh 
such a darling!” Though, for all their innocence, they 
were not so foolish as to mention her in their own homes; 
“They make such a frightful fuss about everything, you 
know. That’s where you’re so different—much more like 
our generation than the last. ’ ’ 

And this, as she knew, was the highest compliment that 

they could pay her. 

Only Gertrude’s boy, cramming for a science course at 
Cambridge, had ever told her the truth; saying to her once, 
when she fell into that easy old platitude of “We were 
never allowed to do that when we were young” “Oh, 
but you were then and we’re now.” Ferdinand a name 
abhorred by its owner—all knees and elbows and large 
red hands and spots, immense solemn dark eyes and social¬ 
ism- with no hint of any sort of likeness to his father or 
mother; far more like the hatching of some large, black 
and ridiculously ominous bird, with tattered wings, alto¬ 
gether a little moulting; his voice with its croak, not yet 


264 


REPUTATION 


quite set to a man's, increasing the resemblance. A lov¬ 
able person, though. Claudia often thought this of the 
new generation: “ They 're more lovable than we were; 
perhaps because they're more at ease, sure of their place 
in the world." 

There was, however, one niece whom she had never seen, 
of whom she had only heard from the other children as not 
being allowed to call her soul her own, the niece towards 
whom her whole being yearned: Francie’s girl, born just 
nine months after Francie’s arrival in Africa, at the cost 
of her mother's life—and it seemed as difficult to associate 
anything so immense and definite as death with Francie, as 
there was in the case of birth or marriage, or any of the 
other big things of life—for as Nanny had said, ‘ £ If there 
ever was any young lady as ought to have stayed at home 
with her fancy work, ’' etc.—and yet it was Francie alone 
of the whole family who had been through them all. 

Tony Fellowes was not quite like Claudia's other chil¬ 
dren, her grown-up children as apart from ‘ £ those unfortu¬ 
nate little Joyces," though she chose rather insistently, to 
include him in that category; but with none of that insid¬ 
ious flattery of deferring to him as an extraordinarily 
knowing and experienced person with which she beguiled 
the others; for really a man of twenty-nine who had seen 
a good deal of service during the war was scarcely a child. 
But this, maybe, was the reason for Claudia Waring pre¬ 
tending that he was one, and not to be taken seriously; for 
she was beginning to be a little scared about Tony, as she 
always was scared—coming to the conclusion that there was 
something queerly cold in her blood—when any man be¬ 
came really, seriously ardent. 

Of course it was all nonsense, for he was ten years—“ten 
good years" she called them, which made them seem more 
—younger than herself. But, still, that queer shaking 
quality of sex had come into their friendship, very consider¬ 
ably spoiling it; and though she knew that he was not 
really in love with her, had never been really in love with 


REPUTATION 


265 


anybody, was just whetting and trying the silvery wings of 
love, he himself believed it to be the one passion of his life, 
or, more than passion, worship; while however much 
Claudia might tell herself that nothing would give her 
more happiness than to see him really in love with, happily 
married to, some nice girl, she knew, deep down in her 
heart, that it would hurt her most terribly; that she would 
miss Tony as she missed the Joyce children. But—oh, 
well, there were only two ways for it; one was forced to 
get up and go away from all such feasts, leave them half 
finished, or else wait for the other participant to make the 
first move; leave one dolorously regarding the rows of 
empty dishes, the mere shells of happy hours. It was in¬ 
evitable either way; at least that was how it seemed to 
Claudia; who had got into the way of never expecting any¬ 
thing, which was not entirely boring, to last; though it 
might be the other way on, and things were boring be¬ 
cause they did last. 

There was to be another young man at the dinner at the 
Criterion that night, though they were going on to the 
theatre alone. And this was the way in which Tony solved 
the difficulty of his two conflicting desires: to show off 
Claudia to all his special friends, his special friends to 
Claudia, and yet keep her, as much as possible, to himself. 

“He’s an awful clever Johnny,” he had said, “ just your 
sort—only I’ll kill him if he cuts me out. As a matter of 
fact, though, he’s completely off his chump over some silly 

ass of a girl!” ,., , 

He did not tell Claudia his friend’s name, nor did he 
tell her what he was like; only that he was “a decent sort of 
chap,” which Claudia said she was glad to hear, seeing that 
they were going to dine in public together. 

Trmv had met her at the station and seen to her luggage, 



bought them ana racea over iu — — 

before meeting her. Oh, yes, she would miss him too dread- 


266 


REPUTATION 


fully when he did find that nice girl, there was no doubt 
about that; all the same she had shooed him away from 
her very doorstep crestfallen for he had made up his mind 
that they would spend the whole day together; had come 
up early from Aldershot on purpose and made no other en¬ 
gagement. 

But Claudia had her work to do. And it was this, 
though she did not know it, which had come between her* 
self and most of the permanent affections of life; that avid 
impatience for some sort of output which, when it came 
upon her, made it almost impossible for her to fix her mind 
upon anything that anyone else was doing or saying, un¬ 
less it were something that was likely to feed the flame: 
11 copy” in some form or other. Anyhow she was going to 
spend the whole evening with Tony Fellowes, and surely 
that ought to be enough. 

He brought a hansom to fetch her, and they floated out 
into the dimly lighted drive of Regent's Park with a tinkle 
of the horse’s bell, with scarcely a sound of horse’s hoofs in 
the thick dust, moving as smoothly as though they were in 
a gondola. When they debouched into upper Regent 
Street and caught the tide of traffic at Oxford Circus, it 
was like launching out at sea, with big waves in the break 
of a reef, and all the old exhilaration came back to Claudia. 
It was lovely to be back in London again. She caught at 
Tony’s arm and pressed it: “Oh, Tony, I shall never get 
tired of it, never, never,” she said. Then as the boy 
stooped his smooth head and kissed the hand upon his arm, 
she was sorry that she had been so exuberant, and, as an 
escape to something more commonplace, asked the name of 
this wonderful friend of his. 

His answer sobered her enough in all conscience. 1 ‘ Blag- 
den—the eldest son of the Duke of Wykehurst”—flatten¬ 
ing her out to a queer sort of blankness; giving her a 
feeling as though she were lost in the years: seeing Blag- 
den—her Blagden—but how ridiculous it was to think of 
him like that, exactly as he had been—as if he would have 


( 


REPUTATION 


267 


remained the same even if he were not dead, reduced to a 
mere number in the peerage, for he had done nothing by 
which to be remembered;—still between fifty and sixty, un¬ 
believably nearer sixty; fresh-faced, upright and almost 
portly, full of an eager, greedy life. 

“You know that dry worried little stick of a man that 
they are always caricaturing in the papers—trembling un¬ 
der a very large, what do you call it?—coronet thing,’’ 
went on Tony, while for the first time Claudia Waring 
realised that it was not her Blagden’s son, but his grand¬ 
son whom she was about to meet: “Too awfully queer to 
think of him as Blaggy’s father! The sort of man who’s 
forever trying to improve everything away,” he went on. 
“My fellow must have taken after his grandfather who 
never came into the title, was killed in a railway smash or 
something. Oh, but a very gay old dog—the best sort of 
way people knew how to be gay in those days; must have 
been a bit stuffy, eh?—early Victorian and all that.” 

“My days, Tony.” 

‘ ‘ I wish you wouldn’t talk like that. ” Tony was uneasy 
as he always was when she referred to her age. “I don’t 
believe you’re any older than I am—getting a bit of a 
back number myself, come to that. Why, even Blaggy— 
Blaggy’s not the infant he was, though he hides it well, a 
tremendous swell, Blaggy. By the way, that girl he s so 
gone on, most fearful spoons—queer thing for him to be 
gone on the same girl for two days running, for he’s a gay 
dog, too, no mistake about it—is living with an uncle of 
the same name as yours; that’s why he’s so mad to meet 
you He thinks if you’re some sort of relation he’ll be 
able to talk about her all the time, without ceasing—but 
he’ll do that anyhow, trust him.” 

“Perhaps she is a relation.” . 

“Much more likely to have something to do with the 
furniture people; that’s what he’s like; an out and out 
Radical—or thinks he is—as proud as blazes really. ’ ’ Tony 
was still on the same subject— while Claudia’s thoughts had 


268 


REPUTATION 


ranged, tugging at the years, drawing them together—not 
in the least hinting or prying, for he was one of the few 
people unacquainted with the legend which had grown up 
round her adventure: “loves me for myself alone,” as 
Claudia said; always most satirical over what touched her 
most nearly. 

“Anyhow, you’ll hear all about her, don’t you worry 
about that,” he added. 

A young man drew up in a motor before the Criterion 
just in front of them, sliding in between them and the 
curb-stone; frightening their horse with a roar and rattle 
and spurt, so like something from the infernal regions that 
it reared, almost fell back upon the cab, regaining its feet 
with a scramble. 

“Damned things, those! Just like Blaggy!—My dear, I 
am sorry!” cried Tony, immensely concerned, helping 
Claudia out; then darting forward with two long strides 
up the shallow step, and catching at the arm of his friend, 
who had turned, was looking out upon the street. 

“Look here, old chap, I wish to goodness if you do want 
to go tootling about with that old stink-pot of yours you’d 
keep to the back streets where it can’t frighten decent- 
minded horses out of their wits. I don’t know if Miss 
Waring has the nerve to stand your being introduced to 
her after the fright you ’ve given her. ’ ’ 

Claudia laughed. “Well, I seem to have lived through 
it,” she said, putting out one hand; while the young man 
laughed too, sweeping off his opera hat, showing the sil¬ 
houette of a rather straight-backed, high head, broad at the 
forehead; a broad-shouldered, slim figure, very elegant in 
its tight-waisted, full-skirted Chesterfield. 

Only as they moved into the brightly lighted hall was she 
conscious of an extraordinary sense of shock. For here 
was Blagden—her Blagden of twenty years ago—and she 
realised this with sudden, vivid intuition—just as he had 
felt himself to be; as he actually had been some twenty-five 
years before she met him: the blue eyes even bluer than she 


REPUTATION 


269 


had known them, full of an even more vivid daring, set in 
smooth lids; the skin finer, the fresh colour less diffused; 
the crisp, closely cut auburn hair remorselessly flattened, 
untouched by grey. 

She was glad to slip into the cloakroom for a moment or 
so to pull herself together; looking at her own face in the 
glass with a sense of panic, a feeling that she might be 
going out of her mind; wondering if it were really herself, 
and where she was—in the point of time more than any¬ 
thing else. 

As she went out into the hall again, mounted the stairs 
between the two young men and crossed the wide room to a 
table by the window—trust Tony to get her a window table, 
once she had expressed a liking for them—her legs ached, 
and she felt suddenly and overwhelmingly old, as though 
something of virtue or vitality had been drawn out of her. 

Throughout the two first courses the friends were scrap¬ 
ping together, showing off before her, displaying each other 
by means of a sort of mutual abuse. Then Tony realised 
her unusual quiet; for he was like that: realised if she was 
tired almost before she knew it herself; surrounded her so 
with cushions, cared for her so at crossings, that she used 
to declare he must think of her as in her dotage. To-night, 
however, she wanted to be cared for; had an idea that it 
would be nice to put her head down upon Tony’s solid 
broad shoulder, let him cossett her throughout the remain¬ 
der of her life; stop being independent, stop working. 
Though what a shame it would be—poor Tony, poor, poor 
Tony—with life and love all before him; for the war 
seemed somehow or other to have kept him young. Or 
was it only being free from women for so long ? For sail¬ 
ors, and settlers in wild open country, have that same qual¬ 
ity of youth. 

He was a shortish, square built young man with a squar¬ 
ish head; very smooth fair hair and rather deep-set, full 
blue-grey eyes. There was something in the very way he 
moved and spoke that rested one, while young Blagden 


270 


REPUTATION 


seemed to glance off him brightly, as off a sort of target. 
There was something of the dragon-fly about Blagden; 
though Tony gave back as good as he got, in his slow pleas¬ 
ant fashion; until he began to be obsessed with the idea 
that Claudia was tired; that he had been a selfish brute to 
drag her out to dinner the very day she came back to 
town. 

He did not say much, but he hovered so that it was in 
the air—this sense of being taken care of, of having some¬ 
thing to hide behind—so entirely engrossed that the Blag¬ 
den boy seized his chance for an undisturbed innings. 

“There’s an awfully nice girl I know who lives with 
some relations of the same name as yours; I wonder if she’s 
any connection, Miss Waring? She’s down near a place 
my people have in the country; at least she used to be, but 
she’s come up to London now.” He spoke with an attempt 
at extreme indifference, his eyes very bright and eager. 

Claudia’s thoughts ran to meet him half-way. She leant 
across the table towards him, all her fatigue gone, her eyes 
as bright as his. Of course, Francie’s—poor Francie’s— 
darling Francie’s—girl. It was ridiculous to pretend that 
there could be any doubt about it, when she “felt it in her 
bones” in the way she did. And yet she asked the ques¬ 
tion, to make it all seem more real with a definite answer: 

“Will you tell me her name?” 

“Miss Stevens.” 

Of course, of course, who else could it be! How often 
had the other nephews and nieces spoken of her; though 
even they did not know her well: “They keep her so 
awfully tight you know, Claude; she must have a beastly 
time of it.”—“I wouldn’t live with Aunt Ethel for any¬ 
thing on earth!” And “Oh, Uncle Piers would be all 
right, but that Ethel woman’s got him under her thumb. 
It was she who made him leave the navy; wanted to 
keep him there, you know—No, not in the navy, under her 

thumb-” “A narrow spindled flat-topped thumb”; 

it was Gertrude’s boy who added this damning detail. 



REPUTATION 


271 


‘‘You say that she’s in London?” 

“Yes, she broke away somehow or other,” answered 
Blagden. “It was most frightfully plucky of her—for I 
believe they bully her, really bully her; and it is bullying 
to make anyone feel that everything they do is wrong. 
But that Mrs. Waring’s like a derelict iron-clad, nothing 
but the ribs left, and—Oh Lord, she may be a relation— 


I say! ” ,, 

“A very, very distant connection. By marriage— 
said Claudia, remembering how this same boy’s father had 
spoken of his own father, “her Lord Blagden,” as a “con¬ 
nection by marriage,” and how Blagden himself had 
said, in telling her of it, that those sort of relationships 
were like the links in a heavy chain— ‘ The sort of thing 
a ghost’s supposed to drag about with it.” 

‘ ‘ I wonder if you know that part of the world. It s m 
Oxfordshire, the Worcestershire side you know—there 
are two potty little stations. Overton and Overton Junc¬ 
tion. It’s really awfully pretty. But dull! Dull’s no 
word for it. I don’t wonder Clare could not stand it, and 
the atmosphere of that Rectory—my hat! I went to call 
once. You should have seen the way they looked at me 
when I was announced. 

Claudia gave an inward chuckle. She could imagine 
it—the shock of that name—Piers and his wife jumping 

out of their skins at it. . 

“It’s too awfully queer—” Blagden was leaning tor- 
ward across the little table towards her, speaking qmckly 
and excitedly. They were dining early because of the 
theatre, and the street outside were still shimmering m a 
half light, a haze of low sun and fine gilded dust, while 
the lights in the restaurant were already turned on. As 
the double crossed lights illuminated the vivid face m front 
of her, Claudia thought: “I’d be sorry for any girl he 
married; no one woman could ever feed that flame, with 
an odd, underlying picture of a small pale woman in fault¬ 
less black, with black kid gloves and narrow buttoned boots. 


272 


REPUTATION 


“—Awfully queer. Tony here told me I was to have the 
pleasure of meeting you and so I got one of your books, 
thought I’d better mug you up a bit—” the impertinence 
was delightful, hardly an impertinence at all because of the 
gaiety, the good looks of the boy, the expression of the 
eyes and eyebrows apologising and yet daring; so that 
Claudia thought: “ She ’ll never be able to resist him— 
will go on forgiving him whatever happens.” 

“—of course, I saw your name in the beginning, got the 
shock of my life, for it’s her name too; so you must be 
relations. I wouldn’t have known only I saw it once on 
some formal sort of letter, frightfully business-like looking, 
addressed to her, for they never call her by it.” 

“What?” enquired Claudia weakly. 

Francie had promised that if she ever had a little girl 
she would call her by her name, and Claudia had been 
dreadfully hurt and disappointed when the others had 
spoken of the child as Clare. 

“Claudia,” said Blagden, and repeated it twice; chal- 
lengingly, then tenderly, as if it amused him to seem to call 
her herself—the famous authoress—by her Christian name. 
“I say, it sounds awfully sort of awe-inspiring, doesn’t it? 
I’m glad they don’t call her by that; I’d never have the 
cheek to make love to her, or . . .T wonder, should I?” 
His bright eyes, daring Claudia, were full of mischief and 
audacity, as though he were more than half making love 
to her. “Her father christened her that because her 
mother, who died when she was born, wanted it. But they 
always call her Clare, for it seems that the old lady she 
was called after had some sort of a—well, hectic history; 
really rather thrilling, though the most thrilling part of 
the whole thing is that my grandfather was somehow or 
other mixed up with-” 

He must have caught something in Claudia’s glance, or 
was it that he came upon the truth for himself, in a sudden 
flash?—though “Playing me for a rise like a trout,” was 
the conclusion that she came to later. Anyhow, he broke 



REPUTATION 


273 


off, flushing to the roots of his hair with amusement, or 
horror—a flabbergasted air of horror, yet still laughing. 
Oh, but much more amused and triumphant than horrified, 
all said and done. 

“Hullo, what’s wrong?” enquired Tony innocently; for 
there was a sudden pause in the conversation; a sense of 
clash, as plain as though someone had broken something— 
a whole tray of crockery and glass. 

“Confound! ... I don’t know what’s come to me—it 
must be gout—cramp in my big toe—always getting it 
now! Comes upon me all of a sudden like an Act of God. 
Awfully sorry—must apologise.” Blagden jumped up, 
stamping his foot, his whole face alive with mischief; while 
the other diners turned, staring at him. “Any sort of a 
shock brings it on. ’ ’ 

“You’ve got St. Vitus’ dance, that’s what’s wrong with 
you,” said Tony severely for him; for something seemed 
to be going wrong with his party. Blaggy was behaving 
like an ass, upsetting his divinity in some way or other that 
he could not get at. 

But Blagden, who did not seem to hear him, had sat 
down again, was leaning forward towards Claudia; far 
too intimately, his host thought. 

“I suppose it’s a long time since you’ve been there?” he 
said, with no mention of any name. 

“Yes ... a very long time.” She seemed to be speak¬ 
ing so carefully; and yet the moment the words were out 
of her mouth, and she saw the flash which was just not a 
smile on Blagden’s face, she realised that she had fallen 
into a trap. 

“But it’s pretty, isn’t it, awfully pretty—in its own 
small way, of course—for anyone who really knows it ? ” 

“Oh, I don’t know—I suppose so in a dull English 
fashion.” 

“And one somehow wants to go back-” he persisted, 

challengingly. 

Claudia was helping herself from the dish which was 



274 


REPUTATION 


being handed to her without the slightest idea what it was. 
1 ‘ He’s cleverer than his grandfather,’’ she thought. Then: 
“But I wouldn’t like that child to marry him; he could 
bait a woman; the other would never have done that.” 

“And the woods,” he said; “you must admit the woods. 
They at least are never dull; mysterious sometimes, yes, 
and exciting, stimulating. Oh, but tremendously ex¬ 
citing—never dull, though. The little woods of Leesden, 
the greater woods of Leesgrove—oh, and others—Ditchley, 
and Barrow, and Snareborough, Little Norton, and Long 
Norton—but best of all the Long Wood at Leesgrove. Oh, 
but you must remember that! ’ ’ 

“Yes,” said Claudia slowly, “I think I do remember 
that.”—“I think”! when the very name “The Long 
Wood” had set it sliding through her head like a pageant 
in its succession of seasons: starting with, and swinging 
back to, autumn. “I think I do remember”! and the very 
scent of it in her nostrils all the while—beech-mast and 
bracken and buddock. She turned to Tony with a sort of 
wrench, for this was unendurable. ‘ ‘ Tony, what about the 
theatre? I never remembered to ask what tickets you’d 
got, and we must keep a watch on the time.” 

“ ‘The Marriage of Kitty,’ at the Duke of York’s. I 
know you always like Marie Tempest, and you said you 
hadn’t seen it. But there’s plenty of time, really. 
Blaggy can’t come, you know; he’s got some other engage¬ 
ment—worse luck!” There was a threat in the usually 
placid voice, the look he gave his friend—“And break it 
if you dare,” he seemed to say. 

“Well, we must be in good time. A life of London will 
never cure me of wanting to see the curtain go up on the 
first act.” 

“And then—the Quarry Wood,” said Blagden, suddenly 
and unexpectedly. 

“Look here, I thought you hated the place,” broke in 
Tony, at the end of his patience. “You were always 
grousing about it, saying that the hunting wasn’t worth 
a stiver, and that your grandfather had let the preserves 


REPUTATION 275 

go all to pieces. Now you can talk of nothing else, boring 
Miss Waring to death. ” 

“There’s more than one sort of sport in life, infant; 
more than one sort of chase,’’ said Blagden sententiously, 
and turned again to Claudia. “You see I’ve got at the 
secret of the place now; it’s not a place to kill anything in; 
it refuses to lend itself to that—perhaps my grandfather 
knew it, and that’s why he let the preserves go all to pieces 
—it’s a place to make love in —The place, the place of all 
places; supplying, in endless rotation, to succeeding genera¬ 
tions, the Dream Girl in her perfection—luminous, delicate, 
ethereal perfection with all the leaf-cool health, the vigour, 
the supple strength of the wood nymph.” 

“You’re mad! That’s what’s wrong with you,” said 
Tony rudely, “and you’ve had enough champagne.” 

“It’s rotten champagne, so I won’t have any more,” re¬ 
torted Blagden coolly. “Though I’m sure it’s cheap 
enough, so you needn’t be so mean about it, old chap. 
But all the same, it isn’t that concoction; it’s the peculiar 
air of Leesgrove Woods that has intoxicated, continues to 
intoxicate me—the Long Wood, the Quarry Wood. You’ve 
breathed it yourself, you know what it is, the way it goes 
to the head, don’t you, Miss Waring?” 

“He knows, he knows every single thing about it!” 
thought Claudia, and for the first time in her life could 
not bear to think of the legend being retailed—to this one 
person, to Tony. 

With a determined effort she switched off the conver¬ 
sation. “At least, I’m as. strong as he is. I won’t be 
beaten by him. Why should I?” she thought; and pegged 
herself down to that; kept the ball of conversation rolling 
without so much as a single break. Only while Tony was 
paying the bill did the Blagden boy get at her again, and 
by this time he was in a changed mood. 

“Look here, Miss Waring, you’ll think I’m an ass—a 
heartless ass. That I care about nothing but rotting and 
ragging. But believe me, I do care—care frightfully about 


276 


REPUTATION 


your niece. ’ ’ There was no pretence of not knowing here; 
of course he knew—had known all the time. But he was 
not tormenting her with it now, had let slip unnoticed 
from its quiver this one specially sharpened dart in which 
he had taken so great a delight. “I don’t think you’ve 
ever seen her. Will you let me bring her to see you if I 
can get her to come—to come anywhere with me?” he 
added bitterly. Then: “She’s scared of me, the Lord 
only knows why! ’ ’ 

“I won’t ash you to bring her,” said Claudia; “I have 
a sort of feeling I mustn’t. But—well, she is just the one 
of them all I have most wanted to know.” 

“You and her mother were great pals. She told me 
about it. She, Clare, realised it because they’ll never talk 
of you, and they’re always—at least that aunt of hers is— 
so infernally jealous of everyone anyone else cares for. 
Perhaps that’s why they hate me—perhaps that’s a good 
sign—perhaps that means she does care,” he said with 
sudden boyishness. “If only-” 

“There are other things you know,” broke Claudia, but 
there was no time for any more, for Tony was with them 
again, his hands full of loose change. 

“I’m most awfully sorry to have kept you waiting; but 
there was some ass fuming over his bill, blocking the pay- 
desk. ’ ’ 

Only as Blagden came round to her side of the hansom to 
tuck in her dress, with its ridiculous fluting he blurted out, 
clumsily for him: 

“If she turns me down, I’m done for,” the gay face— 
so, oh so like that other Blagden’s—haggard in the lamp¬ 
light; so really young as years go, and yet somehow or 
other older than his grandfather’s had ever been; older 
by twenty years and a war, and two generations. 

Two generations—it was incredible! 

“He’s not generally like that,” said Tony as they drove 
off; “he’s generally first-rate company, but he was a bore 



REPUTATION 277 

to-night—I’m most awfully sorry. I could see he was 
boring you to death, dear lady. ’ ’ 

It was not “boring” he really meant. He knew what he 
meant, but he couldn’t find the word. “Wounding” per¬ 
haps, though he would not have used it anyhow; would 
have been dreadfully shy and ashamed of it; a footling 
sort of word. And anyhow, how could a fellow like 
Blagden, a fellow as young as himself, wound Claudia 
Waring? 

“That’s what comes of being in love,” he added rather 
weakly. “Though, lord bless my soul, he’s not the only 
chap that’s ever been in love, by a long chalk either. But 
Blaggy is a bit like that, can’t keep anything to himself; 
would think it sort of waste of time feeling anything if he 
did not let everyone on earth know all about it. Though, 
really, he’s a first-class fellow, plucky as they make ’em— 
I’d hate you to get a wrong impression of him.” 

Claudia did not answer. She moved her hand a little 
with the idea of squeezing Tony’s because he was such a 
dear; then thought better of it, folding it in her lap. 

She was frightfully tired, really relieved to think that he 
was going back to Aldershot by an early train the next 
day. They were too much for her, all these young people; 
wearing her out between them with their incessant demands. 
Not that Tony had made any demands, but a constant 
adoration was almost as bad, keeping one all screwed up as 
it did. 

“I won’t dine out with anyone for another week,” she 
thought. “I’ll have dinner at home alone on a tray, in a 
dressing-gown and loose slippers, just flop.” 

Only when Mr. Lathom rang up next day and asked her 
if she would have dinner with him, “either here or any¬ 
where else you like,” “here” being his own rather pecul¬ 
iarly comfortable little house in Ebury Street—peculiar 
because there were such long gaps in his life when he 
totally ignored comfort—did she change her mind, for the 


278 


REPUTATION 


simple reason that John Lathom expected nothing whatever 
of her—in the way of “ wonderfulness" at least. 

“I suppose that there's no one on earth who has a more 
infinitesimal and yet affectionate opinion of me,” she had 
often thought; while there was something actually sooth¬ 
ing in the fact that he had never read a single one of her 
hooks, made no pretence that he had. For of all people 
on earth those who irritated her most, almost beyond bear¬ 
ing and quite beyond civility, were those who said: *‘ Oh, 

but of course I simply adore your books. Let me see the 
last was—tut . . . tut! . . . really I don't know what's 
come to my memory—but I know I loved it, love them 
all"—having never so much as opened a page of any one 
of them. 

She expended no special pains upon her dress that eve¬ 
ning ; she was too tired; and she said so when she arrived— 
“I know I look as though I'd come out of a rag-bag, at 
least that’s what I feel like"—upon which Lathom re¬ 
minded her cheerfully that she was not so young as she 
had been; and made no real effort at conversation until 
they had almost finished dinner—eating it slowly, and with 
a delicate gusto, for they both enjoyed good food—when 
he told her that he was off to Tibet next week. 

Claudia was roused at this, for she had a complaint to 
make, and made it. “You’re always going away. You've 
a very special trick of going away just when I need you 
most." 

“That’s my innate sagacity. There would be no use in 
my going away when you didn't care whether I went or 
not." He looked at her, smiling. 

“You don’t mean to pretend that you’re going all the 
way to Tibet just to make me miss you." 

“No—oh, no—There are other and even more interest¬ 
ing things in life; though I know that it would be difficult 
to make you realise it. Still, one might as well kill two 
birds with one stone while one's about it.'' 

Lathom's man had removed the cloth, placed the dessert 


REPUTATION 


279 


and wine upon the table, and vanished. The room was 
lighted with candles in tall, branching, silver candelabra, 
and the reflection of their light golden brown shades, the 
grapes, apples and shining decanters of port and mar- 
sala in the depth of the polished mahogany was like a 
beautiful picture of still life under Claudia’s eyes; each 
separate piece of silver and glass with its own shining 
crescent, or running eddy of light about its foot. 

Claudia leant back in her chair with one hand on the 
table, moving it idly from side to side, so that she might 
see the dimmed flash of the one fine ring she wore— 
Granny’s emeralds and diamonds—scintillating like a small 
green pixie pool of its own. She took up her glass of port 
and sipped, laying her lips to it with a sort of voluptuous 
delight; for it was an extraordinarily mellow wine, as 
good as everything else in the house; satisfactory in its way 
as Lathom himself with his well-cut clothes, his air of extra 
careful grooming; the very age he had arrived at, a sort of 
finished completeness, the prime of life as it is called; his 
coolness and self-confidence, and balance. She had an 
oddly exciting effect upon men at times; but she never 
excited Lathom, though she knew that he loved her; he 
told her so with such complete regularity, indeed, that she 
grew to expect it—almost as though it were the water- 
rate. 

“How long do you mean to be away?” 

“A year, perhaps more.” 

She was a little taken aback at that, for she expected his 
offer if not quarterly, half-yearly, and here was something 
more like cutting off the supply than dropping the demand. 

“You always go away just when I need you most,” she 
complained again; but Lathom did not answer her, his 
whole attention seemingly bent upon the exact amount to 
be taken off the end of his cigar; for he was slow and very 
careful in all his movements. She often wondered that he 
did not irritate her to distraction as so many slow people 
did. But there was, after all, so much more to him than 


280 


REPUTATION 


this; and she had the imagination to picture him as being 
so slow because he was accustomed to dangerous places; 
to uncertain and dangerous people, among whom every 
step, every word, look, movement, had to be carefully con¬ 
sidered, guarded. 

Her eyes rested upon him, meditatively. He never 
failed to interest her because of the seeming contradictions 
which she found in his nature. Here he was like a large, 
luxurious tom-cat, and yet there was never anyone better 
able to stalk, wait—above all wait, and with infinite 
patience—to spring at need. It seemed indeed, that all his 
placidity was an immense, sure patience in repose—the 
latent material for action. He could be kind, too, con¬ 
sistently and painstakingly kind, with no sort of sentimen¬ 
tality about him; faithful with that habit of patience. 
There was no man on earth so oblivious—and, as Claudia 
suspected, purposely so—to everything in the way of a 
hint.—If she said she liked flowers, he expected her to buy 
them for herself, or ask him for them; if she said she was 
tired, or her back ached, he did not rush, as her other men 
did, to fetch her a cushion; he expected her to get one for 
herself, or else say straight out: “Give me a cushion’*— 
just like that. 

It seemed as though he saw subtility in nature, in 
physical beauty, but would not be bothered with subtility 
in people, which he regarded as pretence. If Claudia 
acted when she was with him, she did it because she was in 
a gay mood, because it amused her; and she did it 
extravagantly, because she realised that he was not in the 
very least taken in by it. 

“Seeing you like this, almost purring, it seems im¬ 
possible to imagine you as a Lama, or whatever it is, 
swathed or draped instead of dressed, living for months in 
tents; with no bath or any sort of comfort; dirt a necessity, 
part of the disguise,” she said, laughing, and then went on, 
without looking at him, staring at the picture in the 
mahogany, seeing, through it, an endless stretch of sandy 


REPUTATION 


281 


desert: “Your eyes red with grit and sun—like a wild 
animal, never altogether at rest—wary; sleeping with one 
eye open, or not sleeping at all—afraid to turn on your 
side because of what may come creeping up at your back— 
always conscious of your back, as we in civilised places 
never are. Shut up into yourself with that small tight 
feeling which comes with huge open, expressionless places. 
I seem to see you, you know—a close pressed caravan, like 
a bunch of small brow berries dropped down on the im¬ 
mensity of those open steppes; or with tents—tents like 
infinitesimal molehills, just pinched up out of it. Or 
smaller still,—and yet altogether bigger,—you alone.’’ 

“How you do run on,” said Lathom lazily, “but you’ve 
not got it so badly; you must have been thinking more of 
me than I realised.” 

But Claudia scarcely heard him. The whole thing was 
working slowly out in her mind; not as clear as real life, 
that was nothing, but as clear as though she were going to 
put it in a book. 

“Riding—riding for miles and miles, and miles upon 
miles, over apparently endless plains. But I suppose that 
is what you are yourself, that is you; not minding how 
long anything takes, I mean.” She was back at thinking 
of herself now, the long quiet siege he had laid to her 
heart, and he knew it. 

“What a woman you are, forever contriving to twist 
everything round to yourself!” 

She smiled at this, and there was a long silence; not of 
offence, for he could say what he liked to her, almost like 
a brother: realised her faults and failings so perfectly that 
it was a rest to be with him, free of all necessity to exert 
herself. She still saw him riding across his precious plains; 
rather liking him the more for the fact that he was riding 
away from her—the bitter tang of it. 

She roused herself with an effort, wondering if she did 
not choose to speak for how long they would sit like this 
without’a word. 


282 


REPUTATION 


“You don’t offer me a cigarette, I observe.” 

“I don’t like to see.a woman smoking, and you don’t 
like smoking yourself, so what’s the good of pretending? 
Now you do like port.” 

Claudia finished her wine and glanced at him, smiling. 
It’s very good. Come to that, I suppose it’s the only 
reason why I should dine with you.” 

“You dine with me when you’re too tired or nervy to 
dine with anyone else. You dined with me three nights 
running after the peace celebrations, if I remember 
rightly,” said Lathom, but without the faintest bitterness. 
“Now, if you’ve finished, and don’t mind my taking my 
cigar with me, let’s go into the other room and get into 
comfortable chairs.” 

They made the move and sat for a long while 
hardly speaking. Claudia was steeped in comfort. “I 
wonder if I should keep young—well, youngish—for ever, 
or sink into a hopelessly plethoric middle age, if I lived 
like this, ’ ’ she thought; and was caught up by the remem¬ 
brance of those long wanderings of which Lathom hardly 
ever spoke, of which he gave no account whatever, until 
she, with the rest of the intelligent English speaking 
world—and it did not stop there, for they were translated 
into most of the European languages—came to read about 
them in those large and carefully written volumes, where 
the matter-of-fact literalness of the style brought the 
altogether amazing matter into the sharpest possible re¬ 
lief. For Lathom was an intrepid explorer, not only in 
strange countries but among strange minds and strange 
peoples more than uncertain, or oddly one-sided, civili¬ 
sations ; familiar with an amazing variety of standards and 
values, in places where life itself was at a pin-point; your 
ancestor’s ghost all paramount, more to be feared than a 
knife at your throat. 

“ If I did marry you, ’ ’ said Claudia slowly, ‘ ‘ I suppose 
that you wouldn’t go to Tibet.” 

Lathom stared, bending his head a little on one side 


REPUTATION 


283 


and looking at her from under his brows, with a half smile, 
an air of indulgence. He was a tall, big-boned man with 
a long fresh-coloured face, sandy grey hair and very 
deeply-set grey eyes; his limbs so loosely hung and un¬ 
gainly that that slowness and patience of his seemed al¬ 
most a necessity, if he were not to knock things over, which 
he never did; while he could tie flies exquisitely with those 
large hands of his. 

“Of course I should go to Tibet; it’s all settled; there 
are other men in it. I should marry you and then go to 
Tibet 91 

“For a year, ‘ perhaps more’!” said Claudia with a sud 
den sense of irritation, a feeling as though she were being 
robbed, defrauded, with something tweaked out of her. 

“Well, I should come back/’ said Lathom placidly; “and 
after all, you have plenty of interests of your own.” 

“Is that what men marry for, to have someone to come 
back to ? ” she enquired crossly. 

“Practically, though they’re not all honest enough to say 
so. And, after all, isn’t that the one thing which really 
matters, the one thing one needs above all others—the 
one thing that you yourself need and miss? This, 
having someone to come back to,” he added with sudden 
feeling. 

“I know, oh, I know!” cried Claudia. “How horribly 
right you are. I believe that’s what’s wrong with me 
now —I’m all over the place. Look here, Mr. Lathom, it 
has seemed awful coming back with those children—well, 
sort of ‘banned and barred, forbidden fare.’. I believe 
I’ll have to give up that house. It sounds so ridiculous— 
but I simply can’t go into the back room. ... I’ve 
moved my bedroom, too. The house seems cut in half- 
like I am. . . . You won’t believe it, you don’t believe I 
ever really feel anything, and yet it’s always you I come to 
when I’m wretched—You have no opinion of me; half 
the time you don’t really believe what I say, and yet I go 
on saying it—telling you things. You’re as cold as a fish 


284 


REPUTATION 


and as hard as the marble slab it’s laid on, and yet, Heaven 
help me, you’re the only person I can talk to about things 
I really feel, like—like loving those children.” 

“I know you do feel that,” said Lathom. “My dear, I 
know you do feel that.” He put out one large bony hand 
and closed it upon hers; laid out along the arm of her 
chair. 

“I’ve pretended such a lot about them to other people— 
that they couldn’t do without me, that I amused myself 
with them, that I was really growing rather bored with 
them—pretended so much that I can’t be real about them 
now without seeming to pretend more. But look here— 
that small, fat thing Morris, it’s ridiculous—but—but, 
well, my lap feels cold,” she gave a nervous little laugh: 
it seemed so silly to be honestly sentimental and not for the 
sake of what is called a “love interest.” “I get up and 
walk about the room sometimes, just because of that. . . . 
And Yi, you know, the boy-girl,” three months ago she 
would have said “my boy-girl”—“her arms were like 
sticks when she hugged one. . . . They’re not in the least 
pretty children, but ... oh, I don’t know, it’s beastly 
without them, Mr. Lathom. ’ ’ She always called him that— 
Mr. Lathom—though she knew him so well; had never com¬ 
pounded with one of those semi-nicknames or abbreviations 
which were so common among her set, using it, however, 
far more often than one generally uses a name with a 
half laughing—and sometimes, as Lathom suspected, half 
tender—emphasis; though he himself called her Claudia, 
had started it years ago—and he had met her at her first 
literary party, when she was still at Mrs. Spraggart’s 
—with no sort of excuse, or by your leave. 

“I sometimes wonder if I was to go and see that little 
woman again—swear to abjure the devil and all his 
works—” went on Claudia dismally. “Though the silly 
part of the whole thing—the silly and most pathetic part— 
is that there’s been so very little of—oh, you know, the 
devil and his work—an’ all so far back in the dark ages. 


REPUTATION 


285 


Why, when it comes to meeting people’s grandsons. . . . 
But still, if it would do any good-” 

“It wouldn’t. It would only make things worse. You 
might win her round, you probably would; but the whole 
thing would be upon a different footing, strained and un¬ 
real.” 

“Yes . . . yes, I suppose so.” 

Latham had taken away his hand, and she sat now with 
hers folded one over the other, staring into the fire. 

“I feel awfully flat, somehow,” she complained at last. 
“I don’t know why. Of course I miss the children, but all 
the same I’m going to see that niece of mine, my sister 
Francie’s girl, you know; who I wanted to see more than 
anyone. But there it is, I do feel flat; as though I were 
face up against a blank wall. ’ ’ 

“Well, my advice—you don’t ask for it, but all the 
same I’ll give it to you,” said Lathom, “is to drop the 
whole thing. ’ ’ 

“What?” Claudia sat upright, as though galvanized 
into sudden life, for any sort of advice from Lathom was 
little short of amazing. 

“The pose.” 

“What pose? What do you mean?” 

11 Oh, you know. ” He was as nearly resentful as she had 
ever seen him. 

“How should I know?” she enquired obstinately; and, 
indeed, though she did know—at that moment—the knowl¬ 
edge was new enough to be disclaimed; for she had so often 
wondered how much he had heard, or rather what deduc¬ 
tions he had drawn from it; how he felt about—well, every¬ 
thing in connection with her. She had a sudden feeling 
now —the sort of impulse which used to come to her in her 
early girlhood when Piers, her one serious critic, had 
declared that she was always “poking up” people—that she 
would like to poke Lathom on to believe the worst of her; 
to, well “poke” him up to some sort of animation, outburst 
of jealousy. 



286 


REPUTATION 


“What pose?” She hesitated a moment or so to let the 
repetition soak in, staring at him a little insolently, think¬ 
ing, “He’s really awfully ugly,” which had nothing what¬ 
ever to do with it. “Do you know, Mr. Lathom, you are 
too fixed in that one idea,” she went on at last, as he did 
not speak. “Ido not always pose, have not always posed. 
If you have heard what I suppose you have heard—it 
seems pretty well public property—a prehistoric piece of 
gossip—I’m afraid I can give you no very special reason 
to take it for granted that because I’ve shown no passionate 
interest in—” she was going to say “yourself,” but some¬ 
thing saved her from that vulgarity, and she trailed off a 
little over “in any other man”—then pulled herself up 
with, “that there’s never been-” 

Lathom was on his feet at this, for she had poked him up 
with a vengeance. But nothing could have prepared her 
for what came of it. 

“Good God, Claudia, do you imagine that I’m such an 
ass as not to know a virgin when I see one ? ’ ’ 

They parted, almost at that, really angry with each 
other; at least she was angry, strangely indignant; while 
Lathom, engrossed in telling her what he thought of her— 
as painstakingly as though he were teaching one of his 
precious wild men, aborigines, savages, whatever you call 
them, his own language—remained coolly nasty. 

Only, far later on in the night, back home again and 
tucked away in her bed safe from that something too frigid 
for a storm, which was Lathom’s way of letting himself go, 
Claudia’s rage was broken by a gust of laughter; anyhow, 
and thank goodness for it, he had used that other, and more 
biblical word in the place of “old maid.” The second 
biblical word to be hurled at her, and in such surprising 
contrast to Granny’s. 

“You’re in a fury with me because you can’t make a 
fool of me,” he had said, when he helped her on with her 
cloak. “But after all you know that’s what you really 



REPUTATION 287 

like me for, Claudia; and that's what you’ll marry me for 
in the end.” 

He was as sure as all that. “And yet,” as Claudia 
thought to herself, ‘ ‘ he has no sort of an opinion of me ! 9 9 


CHAPTER IV 


A week later, coming np Claudia’s steps on his way to 
give her the exact date of his next adventure, with certain 
addresses where he might be communicated with by cable— 
a precaution which he never neglected, though she would 
far rather have dared to pull the communication cord in an 
express train than to have taken any undue advantage of 
it—Lathom ran into young Lord Blagden, who was blowing 
out of her front door; looking very handsome, fashionable 
and well groomed; very much alive and very pleased 
with himself. 

Claudia, who realised that they must have met, hoped 
that the older man would make some reference to it, ask 
some question as he was shown in; for she was excited 
over Blagden’s news, that he was bringing Clare Stevens 
to tea on the next Sunday, and as always when she was ex¬ 
cited spoiling for more, if only some sort of a scrap with 
Lathom; far enough away from the effect of that first 
“poking” up to want to venture on it again, aware of its 
danger. But Lathom, after a casual remark that he saw 
she had added “yet another bright peculiar star” to her 
train of satellites, switched off on to the subject of his own 
departure, so decidedly that she had no time to play him. 
And, indeed, when she once realised that he was actually 
going in three days she became sincere, for she was really 
fond of him, would miss him constantly and in every sort 
of way; while he was wise enough to burden her memory 
of him with certain commissions, people and things to be 
seen to during his absence; bringing out the best of her by 
the fashion in which he took it for granted that she would 
never fail him in anything which she had once under¬ 
taken. 


288 


REPUTATION 289 

Only at the very last did he speak, not actually of Blag- 
den but of those of her friends whom he represented. 

“Look here, Claudia, it’s a fine wholesome thing that 
you should take an interest in young people—Heaven help 
the woman who doesn’t—but don’t let them wear you out. 
After all, they’re not a real part of your life, nor you of 
theirs. They know it, and you know it—only look what 
happens when they fall in love, and get past the stage of 
talking about it, confiding in you. Take my word for it, 
by the time a woman’s forty she wants friends of her own 
age.” 

“Oh, but I’m not,” said Claudia weakly. 

“Well, as near as nothing.” 

“A year—more than a year. Why, I’m not even in my 
* fortieth year’—and that always seems the cruellest sort of 
robbery. ’ ’ 

“As near as nothing,” repeated Lathom callously. 
“You’ll be that, and all of that, by the time I get home 
again. Anyhow—” he hesitated for a moment or so, while 
his eyes rested upon her—looking pathetic and rather 
lost, really feeling it too—with tenderness and amusement; 
for he was the only person who ever laughed at her, not 
merely with her. “Anyhow, quite grown up, so far as 
people of your sort ever do grow up. And it comes to 
this, this is what I wanted to say: ‘ My dear, don’t allow 

yourself to be dragged to death at the tail of youth!’ ” 

Claudia remembered these words next Sunday when 
Blagden brought Francie’s girl to see her. Though it 
was not Clare, she was quiet enough, who tired her out, 
and it was not she alone who was tired. “So it isn’t all 
a matter of age,” she thought with some relief, “for really 
and truly that child’s as bedazzled, bejiggered as I am.— 
Scared too, he was right about that. Though there seems 
no reason on earth for a modern girl to be scared when she 
gets it so altogether her own way nowadays. ’ ’ 

This was, however, on the top of herself: deeper down 
she knew why Clare was scared. And there was, indeed, 


290 


REPUTATION 


something about Blagden in love, which would be frighten¬ 
ing to any timid girl—and there was no doubt about 
Clare’s timidity—he was so handsome, so overwhelmingly 
masculine, so quick and sort of “swooping down” upon one. 
The only thing which saved her was the fact that he was 
not sure of her; if he had been he would have swept her up 
and made off with her in a moment. As it was he curvetted 
and pranced and neighed round her, going through his 
paces with bewildering rapidity; while his unsureness, his 
evident nervousness, added to the girl’s so that she had 
hardly a word to say for herself; watching him half fas¬ 
cinated—watching him so that Claudia was almost per¬ 
suaded that she loved him. 

The worst of it was, Blagden did not stop at displaying 
himself. He displayed Clare too, turning her round as it 
were; showing her off in every light; drawing her out, with 
a constant “Do tell Miss Waring,” until the whole thing 
became so altogether exhausting that with tea well over, 
a feeling as though she would shriek if anyone turned on 
the lights in the rapidly darkening room—and indeed 
Blagden had darted up already, with a “Shall I turn on 
the lights? It’s getting too dark to see anything,” mean¬ 
ing “too dark for you to see this wonderful girl of mine,”— 
Claudia herself took a firm line. 

“Look here, Lord Blagden, I want to have Clare to my¬ 
self for a little. It’s the first time I’ve seen her, you 
know, and there’s a great deal I want to talk to her about. 
Supposing you vanish for an hour. Come back then to 
see her home, if you like.” 

Blagden was utterly taken aback, crestfallen, at this; so 
wonderfully—in all his moods, his betrayal of them—like 
his grandfather. 

When he had at last taken it in, was at last gone—look¬ 
ing at the clock first, saying: “It’s just twenty to six, 
I’ll be back at twenty to seven,” adding plaintively: 
“though what in the world am I to do with myself till then 
I’d like to know?—And you two cosy here by the fire.”— 


REPUTATION 291 

Claudia made her niece draw her chair closer up to the 
blaze. 

“Let’s toast our knees and talk. There's nothing like 
warm knees for promoting a flow of conversation,” she 
said. And then, “You seem to have got that young man 
into a parlous state, my dear.'’ 

“Oh, but he's so silly, Aunt Claudia. If it wasn’t me it 
would be someone else,” said Clare rather primly. 

Claudia felt herself repulsed, chilled, almost put in her 
place; for to her mind young Blagden seemed a vividly 
romantic, almost irresistible personality. The sort of 
young man whom one might have imagined almost any 
young girl falling in love with. 

Clare was sitting very upright with her hands folded in 
her lap. And yet she was not stiff, there was a lightness 
in her pose, in her whole make, which helped her aunt to 
realise why young Blagden had likened her to a wood 
nymph; a look as though in open country or woodland she 
would move with the lightness, the freedom, of a fawn. 
She was very pale and fair; her hair, in a thick knot on the 
nape of her neck, was an ashy silvery gold; her lashes a 
deeper shadowed gold as they lay upon her cheek, veiling 
the clear vivid brown eyes, the brown of a deep pool; so 
strangely in contrast with her general paleness that they 
had almost startled Claudia as the girl came into the room; 
wide open, dilated with interest, excitement and a sort of 
wild fear. 

“Oh, but don't you see, he loves me like we love fairies 
when we’re little,” she broke out suddenly, while her aunt's 
heart warmed to her; for here was imagination at least. 
“We know that they're not really true, but we choose to 
believe they are; frightened of not believing, because . . . 
Oh, you know, because of what we'd lose.” 

“Do you feel like that about him too?” asked Claudia, 
realising that the girl was glad to talk to someone who 
knew nothing beforehand, focus her own ideas by talking; 
most confident, as shy people are, with someone who was a 


292 


REPUTATION 


practical stranger; watching her as she spoke, thinking: 
“There’s nothing for her really to be frightened of; and 
yet she is frightened. Perhaps it is in her blood—perhaps 
Francie was frightened before she was born—really fright¬ 
ened of something definite, not just of everything—dar¬ 
ling Francie, poor Francie .’’ 

“I believe I did like him more at first. He seemed . . . 
he seemed so—so different. Do you know, Aunt Claudia, 
oh, you must know—you do know things, that’s why I 
wanted to meet you so—the way one gets to long and long 
for something different—just different. And it seemed so 
wonderful for anyone to care about me like that. Then— 
oh, I don’t know,” the words came out slowly and hesitat¬ 
ingly, “but it didn’t seem to be what I wanted. ... I’m 
an awful little idiot, I get so scared over things, and . . . 
you know Lord Blagden seems somehow ... it sounds 
too stupid for words . . . like . . . well, like a sort of Pan, 
or something of that sort: one might put out one’s hand 
some day, just when one had got to count on him, and find 
he wasn’t there. He’s all so mixed up with the woods, 
somehow, and wild and quick and—oh, too good-looking. 
Don’t you think he’s too good-looking, Aunt Claudia? 
He sort of—sort of transfixes one and I don’t like it, I 
don’t want it.” 

“You met him in the woods?” 

“Yes, yes, that’s where I met him, and somehow—I 
think perhaps that’s what it was—meeting him there. It 
frightened me; not at first, but . . . Oh, I don’t know, I 
want things . . . sort of commonplace, I suppose. Yes, 
that’s it; I’m commonplace myself—I can’t follow him— 
I can’t. Anyhow I don’t like the woods—whenever I 
dream unhappy dreams I seem to be wandering there, lost 
—and somehow he’s part of them.” 

“Do you dream unhappy dreams, child?” Claudia had 
her hand on hers, slender and chill. People are queer with 
their dreams: some of being pursued, of fear. She herself 
had dreams of pursuing, lovely swift dreams of hunting 


REPUTATION 


293 


on a fleet, untiring horse; but there were others for 
other people—different sort of people, different sort of 
dreams. 

“Oh, well, dreams are unhappy things. When I was 
little I used to wake screaming, and Aunt Ethel said it 
was indigestion; but it was always dreams of the woods. 
Mother did not like them either. 

“How do you know?” 

“Why, the very last time Father was home on leave he 
said that—‘Your Mother hated them’—Aunt Claudia, 
tell me what was Mother like. Was she lovely ? ’ ’ 

“Yes, she was like a wood-anemone,” said Claudia. 

Clare’s slender hand turned and clasped hers. “I love 
you for saying that. I shall aways love you for saying 
that. Aunt Ethel never saw her; but what she says is she 
hopes I’ll have more character than my mother had—she’s 
always jabbing at me like that. All the same, I do mean 
to have character. I believe mother suffered frightfully, 
frightfully, because she gave in to people, was so sweet. 
I don’t want to give in, I won’t give in.” The girl spoke 
in a soft hurried voice, as though she was being rushed by 
something or somebody; holding back against a warm, 
overpowering, all enveloping wind; her breath already 
caught. 

“Clare, are you happy at home?” 

* * Oh—of course, I have everything I need, ’ ’ said the girl 
slowly, as though she were trying hard to be fair; “they 
mean to be very good to me. Uncle Piers means to be good 
to me—he likes me, so long as I’m not serious. And Aunt 
Ethel ... I believe she does really care, much more than 
I’m worth, but ... Oh, don’t you see I can’t be myself, 
there’s nothing for me to be. If I were her own daughter I 
might understand her better. I know it’s my fault, but 
. . . Oh, it’s like this ...” All her stiffness and primness 
had gone; she was leaning forward now with her elbows 
on her knees, her hands clasped between them. “She sim¬ 
ply can’t leave you alone, she can’t! You know the way 


294 


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if you have a thorn in your finger you keep on and on, 
poking and picking at it. It’s like that: she seems to want 
to pick any feeling I have for her out of me, so that she may 
hold it between her finger and thumb, see just what it 
amounts to. She’s the sort of person who nearly always 
wears a thimble, taps on the table with it.—Oh, but that’s 
got nothing to do with it. The thing is, she won’t leave 
you alone,” the girl repeated again, desperately. “She 
won’t leave any bit of me, my mind or body, alone; she’s 
always asking me questions—oh, about things—private 
things . . . laying down laws and rules for me.” 

“What did she say to you coming up here alone to learn 
nursing ? ’ ’ 

“Well, you see I’m not alone; I’m living in the Home, 
and she doesn’t know how much liberty I have. . . . That’s 
what she never let me have—never, never! ’ ’ she exclaimed 
wildly! “Never a single moment of liberty. And now it 
seems so queer, as though everyone must be staring at me. 
If I went out alone at home I was always tied, everything 
spoilt by the time being fixed for when I had to come back; 
where I was to go, who I was to see. I like the poor people 
really, but I was getting to hate them for the way she’d 
force me into going and seeing them so that she knew where 
I was—‘an object for a walk,’ she called it. I don’t think 
I’m wild, or really very dreadful,” her voice caught over 
a half sobbing laugh. “I only want to be left alone, I 
want to be left alone and given time—that’s what I want: 
time, more than anything else.” 

“Time for what?” asked Claudia, upon 'which Clare 
looked at her and shook her head with an odd, dubious 
smile, a half bewildered look; that look of someone with an 
over strong wind full in her face. 

“Oh, I don’t know. ... Do you know the way some 
clocks seem to tick so quickly and some so slowly? I 
suppose I’m the sort to go slow—I never seem to do any¬ 
thing right if I’m hustled. That’s why Aunt Ethel had 
to take me away from school and give me a governess at 


REPUTATION 


295 


home, which was dreadful—and that’s why I don’t seem 
to be much good at nursing.” 

“Aren’t you much good at nursing?” 

“I don’t think I’m much good at anything.” The girl 
drew a long despairing breath; then seemed to pull herself 
together, and began, quite suddenly, to talk of her work; 
while Claudia had a sort of feeling that it was possible that 
she had let herself go more in this first meeting than she 
would ever do again. 

In a very few minutes, punctual to the moment, Blagden 
came back, and the whole atmosphere of the room was 
changed; while, as Clare went off with him, she was a dif¬ 
ferent person; guarded and elusive, with that delicate, hov¬ 
ering aloofness, like a bird which cannot make up its mind 
to alight, which Claudia realised as holding some quality 
almost irresistible to men. 

She came back again and again, growing nearer, far 
nearer, to Claudia’s heart than any of the other nephews 
and nieces. And yet there were days when she seemed to 
get nothing of her, for there were odd streaks of quiet 
secretiveness about the girl, the outcome of her life with 
people who questioned her every movement; days when her 
face had the curiously still expression of a person who is 
afraid of telling, who is holding something very tight; 
though at this time—almost up to Christmas indeed—there 
could have been nothing to make a secret of. 

On these days she would chatter away about the nursing 
home and her own work, which she seemed to regard with 
a sort of amazed reverence, keeping altogether on the sur¬ 
face of things; or else lie silent upon Claudia’s sofa, with 
her eyes half closed, her hands clasped behind her head, 
her face and lips dead white, for it was plain that she was 
not strong enough for the life she had embarked upon; 
while Claudia would leave her alone and go on with her own 
work, for it was a fact that Clare was the one person in 
the world whom she could ever bear to have in the room 
with her while she was writing. 


296 


REPUTATION 


At intervals, however, intervals which grew rarer and 
rarer, until, with the New Year, they ceased altogether, 
there would be some return of the half freakish humour 
and imagination, the feeling, the confidence of that first 
day, when Clare would tell her all sorts of things, with that 
cry to which Claudia had grown so accustomed from the 
others—flaunting it, as she remembered later, when she 
realised how she had failed, like a sort of feather in her 
cap. ‘T can talk to you, I can tell you things because I 
know you’ll understand. You’re really much more like 
someone else—only there’s no one really like you—than a 
relation. ’ ’ 

It was in one of these more confiding moments that Clare 
once again referred to her mother’s fear of the woods. 

‘ ‘ She was delirious before she died, you know; and Father 
said that all the time she was talking of the woods and the 
trees, and of you; of how she followed you into the woods 
and tried to find you and couldn’t,” said Clare. Upon 
which, with an awful suddenness, a cutting clearness, there 
rose up before Claudia’s mental vision something which she 
did not even know that she had ever seen—the mental pic¬ 
ture of Francie’s small shoes outside their bedroom door, 
thickly caked with grey slimy mud, with a scrap or so of 
withered grass, and a broken beech leaf sticking to them, 
the evening of that first day when she had been to Lees- 
grove Hall; the day Knowles abducted Pickles; the day 
Mrs. Hall died; the day when she herself had come home 
to find her dressing for dinner, curling her fringe, as though 
nothing had happened beyond the common sort of naughti¬ 
ness of her—Claudia—being so late. 

So Francie had known or guessed at something; and that 
look of wistful fear in her face was not for herself, those 
sorching African winds, alone, but for her sister. 

What could she have thought, what must she have 
thought when she had been driven to follow and try to find 
her in those dark woods; then been too scared to say any¬ 
thing about it? 


REPUTATION 


297 


And still to have said nothing—really nothing, though 
she had talked so much—when they were alone at night, 
during the days that followed; and all the time thinking, 
fearing—God only knew what. For Francie was married, 
even then; knew things of which Claudia knew nothing 
whatever. But to have said nothing, that’s what beat her; 
Francie of all people; Francie who had always seemed to 
her to have too much to say about everything, never able to 
keep anything to herself. 

On quite another occasion Clare said, out of nothing as 
it were: *‘ There was one thing which Father said about 

you which almost made me hate you—I didn’t think that 1 
could ever even like you then, much less get to love you 
like I do now—and yet he meant it as a sort of praise—the 
only thing anyone of them ever said, like—like that. ’ ’ 

“Did they tell you very dreadful things about me, you 
poor child? No wonder Blagden was afraid that he 
mightn’t be able to lure you here?” 

“No, they just—they never said anything; they never 
even mentioned your name. It was only because of what 
Father said.” 

Clare dropped to silence for a minute; stroking Claudia’s 
grey cat which lay stretched out upon her knees, facing the 
fire, purring and padding her skirt. 

“What did he say?” 

“Mother must have been angry with him about some¬ 
thing—I don’t know what made him tell me, but he used 
to tell me all sorts of things. I think he had been so much 
alone that when he once started talking he just ran on 
and on. He told me that Mother turned round on him 
about something and said: ‘If my sister Claudia had 
really wanted me I’d have never come out to you here, to 
this horrible place,’—she hated Africa you know—‘never, 
never.’ He said then, about you, ‘she showed she had 
some sense of what was right and proper in that, if in 
nothing else, for you must always remember a woman’s 
place is with her husband.’ ” 


CHAPTER V 


Maude’s eldest girl was a nurse at one of the large 
London hospitals. * ‘ They blame me for what Clare’s done 
—taking up nursing, I mean , 9 ’ she said one day, sitting by 
Claudia’s fire warming her large, slightly reddened and 
very clean hands; so calm and capable that her aunt had 
often wondered why she sought her out, came to see her; 
studying her until she arrived at the conclusion that she 
herself took the place of a secret dissipation almost a vice, 
the only vice, in Dora’s sane and well ordered life. For the 
girl was as romantic as people who would never think of 
throwing their own caps over windmills so often are. 

Anyhow, Claudia felt that she had been very good for 
her, and in innumerable ways. For one thing Dora was 
far less crude and parochial than she had been. She never 
forgot the girl’s calm statement at the end of one of her 
own literary parties where she had, for the first time, helped 
ppur out the tea. “It simply thrills me to meet them all— 
writers, I mean, because—oh, don’t you see—of what one 
knows about them.” 

‘‘ What does one know ? ’ ’ 

“Oh, well, Aunt Claudia,” it was before Dora arrived 
at the more companionable “Claude,” “I don’t want to 
hurt your feelings, but of course you must know, everyone 
knows, even outsiders—living such immoral lives and all, 
as they do.” 

Claudia had cried out upon this: “My dear, they 
simply haven’t the time!—ribbons in their laces and all 
that sort of thing!—It takes time, you know, and money.” 
All the same she was immensely amused at so artless an 
interpretation of her own attraction for her niece; hurt, 
too—which was ridiculous—for she felt that there really 

298 


REPUTATION 


299 


was so much more to her than this; while, as always at 
such times, she harked back to the thought of Lathom 
who loved her for herself, for the very little which he 
seemed to see in her. 

Dora’s sister Frances was even more easily thrilled; and 
yet far more easily scared. She would come up to London 
to stay with one of the aunts, who regarded Claudia “as 
good as dead,” pop out into the world like a bunny from 
its hole—all that air of immense daring—get herself mixed 
up, with the boldness of timid and half reckless people who 
are always drawing back just at the last, and can be de¬ 
pended upon to do it, with all sorts of undesirable men, 
even people she met in trains; then pop back to her own 
home, the safety of a Cathedral Close; for it was Maude’s 
husband who had been made a bishop after all. “And it 
must have been meant, you know, for only look at his legs, ’ ’ 
as Maude said, or was reported by her nephew Ferdinand 
to have said; and indeed the legs were far better than poor 
Frankie Stevens', but then, everything had prospered with 
Maude. 

Claudia, who declared that she saw Frances as, alter¬ 
nately, all eyes, or a flash of white scut—“just like a 
bunny”—would tell Dora that she thought her sister was 
far too pretty, dangerously pretty and indiscreet, to be 
trusted alone; for the war had loosened the leading strings, 
and girls were allowed out alone or in couples; while their 
elders settled themselves deeper in their armchairs, pleas¬ 
antly convinced that no man ever thought of “speaking to 
a really nice girl.’ 9 

But Dora was not in the least concerned for Frances. 
* 1 She’s always on the hop, and she knows when to hop; or 
else she hops—from one to the other—too quickly to be 
caught.” That’s what she said; while Claudia thought of 
her as thoroughly indifferent, too indifferent, or wanting in 
imagination, to bother about anyone. 

But it was not that, for here she was, very much con¬ 
cerned indeed about Clare, though rather anxious to get 


300 


REPUTATION 


it all off her mind and on to her aunt’s; grumbling as 
she always did in a calm level way, even over her work, and 
yet going on with it just the same. 

‘‘I like the way people push responsibilities on to one. 
Aunt Ethel wrote to me the other day and said that she 
depended upon me— me, if you please—me of all people, 
with all I have to do!—to look after Clare, because if I’d 
not gone in for nursing she’d never have thought of it. 
Why, Claudie, it’s 1 who would never have thought of it for 
her—and I know a jolly sight more about it than Aunt 
Ethel does; while it’s I who did everything on earth to dis¬ 
suade Clare. But she’s as obstinate as a pig. Look here, 
I’m awfully fond of that kid, but she’s a little idiot in some 
ways, the sort of girl who ought to stay at home and do 
fancy work. There was never anyone more unsuited for a 
nurse than Clare, and so I told her, plainly enough. She 
feels things a great deal too much; then they get on her 
nerves, and she goes all to pieces, and makes idiotic mis¬ 
takes. She’ll kill somebody some day. And she’s always 
thinking about people’s feelings, that’s so stupid—about 
her patients, too, her patients of all people! About what 
they think of her, and whether they like her or don’t like 
her, as if it mattered twopence! And such a little cow¬ 
ard; you should only see her crossing Piccadilly Circus. 
She’s blue white before she starts; stands shivering, and 
then makes a sudden bolt into the very thick of the traffic. 
A nice sort of person, that, to be trusted with other people’s 
lives! 

“Besides she’s far too young; no hospital would have 
taken her, not even the children’s. It’s only those nursing 
homes—and they take anyone. Talk of Frances doing silly 
things! She’s all right. It’s Clare who will do the silly 
thing if we don’t take care. She’s so quiet, don’t you see? 
She screws herself up, and screws herself up and—oh, well, 
then at the end anything may happen, just anything! 
That’s how she got her leg broken at school, you know. 
She wouldn’t go down the fire-escape chute when they were 


REPUTATION 


301 


practising—wouldn’t and wouldn’t; then just did as they 
were moving it—too late. That’s Clare all over.” 

41 She ’ll marry. ’ ’ 

Dora shrugged her large shoulders. “Oh, well, I hope 
to goodness she will, before—oh, well, before anything 
happens. ’ ’ 

“There’s that Blagden boy very much in love with her.” 

“U-u-um—y-yes.” They had started tea by this time; 
and Dora, having helped herself to a hot buttered scone, 
was concentrating her immediate attention upon it, or 
apparently so. “You can’t think what a joy your teas 
are after the hospital, Claude; I never used to really care 
about food before, but they’re making a pig of me.” 

“Do you think she likes him—in that sort of way?” 
Claudia persisted: realising that her niece was half at¬ 
tempting to turn away from the subject, half wanting to 
reopen it. She could see that by her quick, sidelong glance 
over her scone, her air of importance. 

“I don’t know. I think he bewilders her.” 

“Dora, what else are you thinking?” 

With a sudden rush Dora let herself go, as she had been 
longing to do; for she had always been mad to talk about 
what she called her aunt’s “romantic past,” never dared 
to; and talking about this Blagden was almost as good as 
talking about the other —the Lord Blagden. Besides, he 
himself was resurrected in this, what they called “starting 
people talking all over again”: involved and involving 
Clare. It really was too thrilling. 

“ There’d be the most awful fuss ... the same name 
and all, you know. Look here, Claude, I don’t want to 

hurt your feelings or anything--” this was Dora’s own 

special way of blundering in. 

“You won’t do that,” said Claudia, rather too crisply, 
and yet smiling; for no one could be offended with Dora, 
so invincibly good tempered. 

“Well, you see, it’s not so much Uncle Piers, but Aunt 
Ethel. She’s common, you know, common enough to like 


302 


REPUTATION 


fusses; though I suppose one oughtn’t to say things like 
that about one’s own relations.” 

“Dora, dear!—in-law, only in-law,” pleaded Claudia. 
“Though, after all, why should any relation, the nearest 
relation, be regarded as something sacerdotal? Come to 
think of it, they’re nothing more than the result of the 
propinquity of two members of some past generation. 
Take them like that and you’ll take them calmly, find 
them on the whole much the same as everyone else—though 
that’s the result of observation, not practice.” 

“Well, of course if you hadn’t run away with that other 
Lord Blagden,” Dora rushed forward, and then drew back 
in terror.—“Really, Claude, Aunt Ethel is too silly, for 
I’m perfectly certain she would not be related to you 
for anything; and not because of you, yourself, but be¬ 
cause she’s glad of something to be horrified at in connec¬ 
tion with a title. But she really is fond of Clare in her 
own way, and she wouldn’t let her marry anyone whom 
she thinks belongs to—oh, well, a fast sort of family, and 
of that name, too. If she did she’d have so much to say 
she’d scare or disgust Clare clean off it. She can’t bear 
being discussed, you know—Clare, I mean—would throw 
up anything, rush away into anything, to escape a row.” 

“Yes, I know. Anyhow, I’m not sure if she’d be happy 
with Blagden; she wants someone to keep on smoothing 
her feathers, and he’s always ruffling them; saying ‘ Shoo, ’ 
just for the delight of seeing her spread her wings—observe 
their whiteness.” 

“You are clever, Claude! I couldn’t have put it like 
that—not if I tried for ever.” 

“If you say that again I’ll never give you another bite 
of cake in my house. You’re too big to gush, Dora.” 

“Well, I’d better take all I can get now.” Dora smiled 
indulgently, as she might have smiled at her slightly- 
demented patients—people who needed humouring—and 
helped herself afresh, for she had an enormous appetite. 
Then, really worried, and not merely important, broke out. 


REPUTATION 


303 


to Claudia’s amazement, with: “Look here, Claude, I 
am bothered. I don’t know if I ought to say anything. I 
hate to seem to tell tales, but you’re different to everyone 
else. She goes about a great deal too much with that man 
Styles. I don’t know how she gets the time. I never had 
a moment when I was a pro., with exams, and all. They 
can’t have much to do in those nursing homes, unless*it is 
that Clare’s no good—they just keep her because of the pre¬ 
mium,” she added, always a little jealous of anyone she 
liked. 

“Styles!” exclaimed Claudia. “What, that Mr. Styles! 
Why, he’s quite middle-aged. Besides, he’s married. 
She brought him here, and . . . Oh, it can’t be the 
same!” 

Dora gave her an odd sidelong glance. “Oh, yes, he’s 
married,” she said, “and middle-aged. But, all the same” 

_she broke off there, though Claudia could almost hear 

her throb—like a panting steam engine brought to sudden 
check—with the words: “your Lord Blagden was married; 
your Lord Blagden was middle-aged. And only look what 
happened!” 

“Nonsense, Dora; it’s impossible!” Claudia remem¬ 
bered Mr. Styles perfectly. He was something in the city 
—Oh, quite in a big way, but still not the sort of man she 
was used to; “out of the top drawer,” as they said. Tall 
and smooth, beautifully dressed, and with beautiful man¬ 
ners and a soft step, a soft voice; his black hair so smooth 
it looked as though it had been japanned; the sort of man 
who shaves blue. She remembered what care he seemed 
to take of Clare. She herself had said to the girl later: 
“You oughtn’t to go about so much with men, child,” for 
though the time had come for girls to go about alone, it 
was not yet ripe for going about with a man, unless you 
were engaged to him. 

She remembered, too, how Clare had glanced at her in 
her scared way, with those beautiful dark brown eyes of 
hers, dilated, her fair transparent face flushed, horrified 


304 


REPUTATION 


at the very idea of being suspected of doing anything that 
she ought not to do, and exclaimed: ‘‘Oh, but there can’t 
be anything wrong about that. Why, he’s married!” 
speaking as though this fact alone rendered a man sacred 
and apart as—not a monk, something far more rarefied 
than that, a nun, perhaps. 

But then, later on, it came back to Claudia how, when 
Clare had spoken of going somewhere or doing something 
with this same Mr. Styles, she had said: “It’s such a rest, 
somehow. Boys make me so tired, now I’ve got my own 
work. Dora thinks it’s nothing, but it simply piles up in 
front of me, so that I’m always thinking of it, and terrified 
of doing something stupid.” 

Claudia had told her then that she ought to give up 
nursing and go home—that she wasn’t strong enough for 
it; and the girl had cried out that she must be strong 
enough. 

“I couldn’t live at home. Oh, I couldn’t! Aunt Ethel 
never understands anything. I keep thinking she will 
understand, because you see there is no one else. I didn’t 
see Dad often, but he used to be someone to write and tell 
things to, and now he’s dead there’s no one. And one 
simply can’t tell things to Aunt Ethel. She thinks she 
owns one, body and soul. If you do try she takes the words 
out of your mouth half-way; says 4 Of course, of course, I 
know what you mean—you mean to say,’ or ‘you want to 
tell me’—and it’s all quite different, though one gets be¬ 
yond trying to explain. Oh, it’s hopeless!” 

‘ ‘ And do you tell things to Mr. Styles 1 ’ ’ Claudia remem¬ 
bered how she had asked this, with a half-laugh because it 
seemed so altogether ridiculous; and how Clare had 
answered, glancing at her with that sliding, sidelong 
look, which was yet so completely candid and innocent. 
Styles, now, he had a stare, the sort of stare that dared 
you to say he was anything but honest,—“N-n-no. I 
think it’s really the other way; he tells me things. I’m 
really awfully sorry for him, Claude, ’ ’ she had caught up 


REPUTATION 305 

the other niece’s name for her aunt. ‘ ‘ He seems so dread¬ 
fully lonely, and nobody really seems to understand him. 
Why, even his own wife—and I think that must be too 
dreadful, don’t you?” 

Dora went on talking and talking. She was going away 
for her holidays, spending part of it with friends, and 
wanted to borrow her aunt’s fur; could get at the subject 
now, with a comforting sense of having shed the Clare 
worry, cast it upon Claudia’s shoulders. 

“You always do wear your fur coat when it’s real win¬ 
ter like this, don’t you?” she said. And Claudia agreed, 
fetching her fur boa from her room and giving it to Dora; 
knowing all the while—on the top of her engrossment 
with Clare—that she would hate her fur coat, passionately 
desire her beloved black fox for the entire fortnight that 
Dora had it; flagellating herself all the while as a fool, 
a complete fool, an insensitive, oblivious, middle-aged fool 
to have discounted the appeal of mature masculinity; 
that “You’re the only one that understands or cares” at¬ 
titude with anyone of Clare’s age. 

“We ought to be made to pass an exam, in youth every 
year or so,” she told herself later, for this was the talent 
upon which she most prided herself: the precise remem¬ 
brance of how young people felt about things. 

For any girl to say of any man that he was misunder¬ 
stood ’ ’ by his own wife, and to take it laughing! 

“I ought to be buried. It’s time I was buried,” she 
said; seeing—for she had that sort of fancy—the inside 
of the earth as a sort of rubbish chute, packed with people 
who were no longer wanted; people who were done with, 
people like herself: and running with this, the real position, 
the thing that really mattered; Clare—so ethereal and 
grave, so young and fastidious; Clare with Blagden in 
love with her—in relation to this preposterous creature 
Styles—what a name too!—realising the danger so clearly 
and yet, in the end, letting it slide; the fact being that 
she was getting a little too old, too blunted to assimilate, 


306 


REPUTATION 


quite naturally the inconsequences of youth; seeing 
it, with her keen imagination as few people could have 
done, and yet without it actually biting, so that it 
could be squeezed down to nothing by the press of 
affairs. 

As a matter of fact, she had a good deal to think of 
just then. Her new book was out, and she was in great 
request, overwhelmed with engagements and letters which 
had to be answered; splashing about in her busyness like 
a child in the sea, stopping every now and then to wonder 
what it all came to, think how tired she was of it all; 
speculate as to where Lathom was, what he was doing and 
thinking, and then going on again; worrying about Clare, 
and then half forgetting her; making sure that every¬ 
thing was all right, the more sure in that Frances, who 
was once again in town, staying with Lady Mannering, 
ricochetting off from her undesirable acquaintances to 
Claudia, herself, seemed so dangerously flighty in com¬ 
parison with her cousin. 

Dora came back from her holidays, and wrote and told 
her aunt how useful the fur had been; repeating so many 
nice things which she had heard people say about the new 
book, that Claudia felt impelled to tell her to keep it. 
There was a congress of English and American writers; 
Tony was on leave; everyone she knew seemed to be in 
London busied over Christmas shopping; wanting her to 
go out with them in the evening, or come and meet so and 
so, be shown off, at lunch. 

In this fashion every day was full; and; after all, she 
was seeing Clare constantly. It was just chance that she 
never happened to be alone when the girl came to tea; 
and anyhow she did not stay long; there would have been 
no time for any intimate talk. For in these days Clare was 
always hurrying away back to duty, or on to a theatre, 
because it was her night off; talking so much about Blag- 
den—far too much and too quickly, as Claudia remembered 
later—that she took it for granted that it was with him 


REPUTATION 


307 


that she was going; while if Blagden himself hap¬ 
pened to he there at the same time, they started off to¬ 
gether. More than once Claudia watched them from her 
window, crossing the three wide strips of light from the 
three lamps which they passed before leaving the square; 
walking rather far apart, and from the set of their heads 
apparently silent—Blagden silent! 

There was Tony too. After a while, only Tony, for 
Blagden came less and less often. Claudia was very 
anxious that these two young people, Clare and Tony, 
of both of whom she was so fond, should be friends. But 
it did not seem to work, for they had next to nothing to 
say to each other; and though, in Blagden’s absence, Tony 
always took Clare back to th£ nursing home, or wherever 
she was going; he never spoke of her; seemed so vague 
and indifferent when Claudia questioned him that she 
grew sharply impatient, thinking: “We usen’t to be like 
this—they don’t really care for anything, get excited over 
anyone nowadays.” 

Clare herself was quieter than ever. Sometimes Claudia 
wondered if she was really rather stupid, or a little sulky. 
When she did wake up she was restive, showing a quite 
new petulance as though everything was too much for her. 
One day, alone for a moment with her aunt, she broke out 
into a sort of complaint: 

“I’m sick of being stage managed!” she said; and then 
pulled herself together, crimson and horrified. “Oh, I 
don’t know why I said that. I oughtn’t to have said that. 
All the same,” she stiffened to a sort of obstinacy, still very 
much flushed, “it was you who told me I oughtn’t to go 
about with men; and yet you’re always .getting Lord 
Blagden, or Mr. Fellowes, to go home with me; pairing us 
off! It’s not like you, Claude. It’s more—more like Aunt 
Ethel.” 

Claudia turned round upon her at this; for it was really 
too much. “Look here, Clare; people say all women are 
fools about men; but surely you’re not such a fool as not 


308 


REPUTATION 


to see the difference between men like Lord Blagden and 
Tony, and that Mr. Styles.” 

“I can’t see what there is to admire so much about Lord 
Blagden,” Clare flamed out, actually flamed out at her. 
“ He ’ll never leave me alone; he tires me out. He tried 
to kiss me the other day and—I think he’s horrid, horrid! 
Then he’s always threatening-” 

“Threatening what!” 

‘ ‘ Oh, that he ’ll kill himself or something stupid like that 
if I don’t care for him. How can I care for him when 
he’s always worrying? . . . And I can’t see why you talk 
as you do about Mr. Styles. I didn’t think you were a 
snob, Claude: I didn’t think you could be a snob.” 

“Well, you’d better reverse your ‘thinks,’ my dear, for 
that’s one thing that we all are,” said Claudia dryly; and 
would have said more had not Tony appeared upon the 
scene—and it was odd that though she had referred to him 
equally with Blagden, Clare had not so much as mentioned 
his name. Claudia supposed it was that he did not count. 
Come to that, she supposed that there was a sort of snob¬ 
bery which took the two extremes of the pole—Blagden and 
that man Styles—and left Tony, dear solid Tony, alto¬ 
gether out of it. 

The young people went off together; but when she was 
at the bottom of the stair Clare came tearing up again, 
hugged her aunt, and begged to be forgiven. 

“I don’t know what’s wrong with me,” she said. “I 
don’t know what’s come over me to speak like that, to you 
of all people! I only wish there were no men in the world. 
It’s men that make all the bother.” 

Looking back over it later on, Claudia remembered every 
stage of the affair. First it had been: “As if any girl 
would want to be anything more than just friends with a 
married man ! ’ ’ 

“Then: “Well, if he is married, that’s no reason why 
I shouldn’t help him just the same as any other human 
being; a married man’s human, I suppose. ...” 


REPUTATION 


309 


Then again—and this must have been a quotation, most 
likely from Styles himself: “ One would think all married 

men had the plague!” 

Later on: “I can’t see what difference it makes if a 
man is married or not.” 

Later still, and very defiantly: ‘ ‘ If a man’s wife doesn’t 

care for him, it’s her fault if he finds someone else who 
does. ” 

And yet it had all slipped out so gradually that it failed 
to frighten Claudia; until she realised it, all chalked up 
together, like the total of a fritter of petty expenses, in her 
own mind. 

Meanwhile, it was very plain that Blagden was wretched 
—wild and restless. On the rare occasions when he did 
come to see Claudia, he was unable to sit still, or keep to 
one subject for two minutes together. His eyes were very 
bright; he looked amazed and dreadfully hurt. If Clare 
was there he no longer attempted to prance; his hostess, 
indeed, could have beaten him for the way in which he 
crawled, endeavoured to ingratiate himself, and then 
bounced off in a huff. 

One day Claudia and Tony came across Clare and Styles 
together at an exhibition in the Grosvenor Gallery. Clare 
was walking round with her head in the air, her catalogue 
clasped between her hands. Her eyes were fixed upon the 
pictures, but she moved along the line without turning her 
head to one side or the other, so that Claudia felt sure that 
she did not so much as see them. She was wearing a small 
brown velvet hat, brown furs, and a brown coat and skirt, 
and looked so pretty and fragile that people stood back a 
little to stare at her. For the first time—for women did 
not wear their hats pulled down over their eyes, conspirator 
fashion, in those days—her aunt realized that she had just 
the same blue veins in either temple as her mother; though 
her face was stronger, more set, almost fanatical at that 
moment, with its look of strain, its determined quiet. 

Claudia and Tony came up behind them quite by chance, 


310 


REPUTATION 


taking them in by degrees, as one does take in people at a 
picture show, where they seem so much less real, so much 
more drab and lifeless than the presentments upon the wall; 
wrapped in that sort of oblivion of the gazer. 

‘‘Just for tea . . . you have never seen my rooms, and- 
there are any amount of things I want to show you/’ 
Claudia heard Styles say; then, “There can be no harm 
in that; and I promise I won’t keep you, see you home 
directly afterwards. ’ ’ 

Claudia ought to have interfered here, or at least in¬ 
terrupted. She did not know why she hesitated, for it 
would have been the natural thing to do; save that no sort 
of movement beyond that slow processing seemed altogether 
natural in that place. As it was, Clare herself, suddenly 
and unexpectedly, snapped round upon her companion. 

“No.” The emphasis of the word was all the greater 
for the way in which the girl restrained her voice, if 
Claudia had not been almost touching her she could not 
have heard. Styles was different; he spoke more loudly, 
almost blustering, but with eyes for no one apart from 
Clare. “Why do you worry me?” she went on. “You 
never used to worry me like this—you were just the one— 

I can’t stand it! I—I can’t stand it. Do be quiet.” 

She turned her head again, without seeing her aunt; 
without, or so it seemed, seeing anybody, and moved slowly 
along the line of pictures, like a sleep-walker. 

Tony’s hand was on Claudia’s arm. “Don’t, don’t 
speak. It will do no good now—wait, just wait,” he said; 
and she gave into him, afraid of her own tendency to rush 
things, wondering what she could say without making some 
sort of a scene which would only antagonise Clare; dully 
amazed to realise that Tony knew her niece well enough 
to be prepared for this: that sudden, fierce antagonism of 
the very shy. 

Later on, as they were having tea together in the very 
newest Bond Street tea-shop, where one paid a preposterous 


REPUTATION 


311 


price for a minute cress sandwich on account of all the 
waitresses being, supposedly, ladies, and certainly—without 
any supposition—very pretty girls, Tony said, in his care¬ 
ful, deliberate way: ‘ ‘ Blagden’s half off his chump. Look 

here, Claudia, you’ll have to put your foot down about that 
bounder Styles; he won’t leave Miss Stevens alone; they’re 
always together. 

“You dragged me away,” said Claudia resentfully. 

“It was no good saying anything then. You know what 
she’s like, wild and shy as . . .’’—here his imagination 
failed him, and he added, rather lamely—“ anything. But 
write to her to-night; make her come and see you. That 
chap—pheugh, it’s horrible to think of. Why, he has a 
wife and about six kids at Putney or somewhere,—anyhow 
he wants a horse whipping. Blagden is a good fellow—one 
of the best—but why doesn’t he take a firm line, or else 
clear out of the way, instead of behaving like a spoilt kid ? 
That’s what I want to know.” 

“Oh, but of course there’s nothing in it,” protested 
Claudia. Then, as Tony did not answer her, she repeated, 
with a dreary re-arrangement of the sentence. “There’s 
nothing in it, of course. It’s only just that it doesn’t— 
doesn’t look well.” 

As they parted on her own doorstep, for Tony had to 
go back to Aldershot, she laid one hand on his arm and 
said—without thinking in the least what she was going 
to say, expressing that sort of ardent and selfless desire 
which comes upon one as suddenly and astonishingly as 
though someone else had spoken, often enough—for human 
nature is poor stuff, evaporating with the spoken word. 

“I wish it were you, Tony!” Upon which the young 
man jerked out a short laugji, and remarked that that was 
a queer thing for her to say with Blagden his best pal and 
all; and Clare—“your niece,” as he called her—“showing 
every possible sign of aversion”; going on talking for a 
moment or so, rather unnecessarily; and then adding, as he 


312 


REPUTATION 


moved down the steps, hat in hand, with the light from the 
open door shining upon his smooth fair hair and anxious 
face: 

“You won’t forget to write that letter, will you?” leav¬ 
ing Claudia with the thought of what wonderful friends 
men were to each other; for he could scarcely have been 
more concerned if he himself had been in love with Clare. 
“Though he’d manage the whole thing off his own bat for 
himself, if he were,” she reflected. 

Anyhow, there had been no need to remind her of that 
letter, for she herself was thoroughly scared, and directly 
she was upstairs, without waiting to take off her hat, she 
sat down to write it: asking Clare to come and see her next 
day, saying that she would be at home to no one else and 
would keep herself free for lunch, dinner or tea so that she 
might come at whatever time it was easiest for her to get 
off duty; though, after all, she might have saved herself the 
trouble, for her letter crossed with one from Clare herself, 
saying that she was going back to Leesden early next 
morning. 

“I’m feeling awfully tired out and more stupid than 
ever,” she said. “I expect you were right, and I’m not 
strong enough for nursing. The truth is I don’t seem much 
good for anything, and I can’t get on with people; anyhow, 
nobody minds my going away from here. But I do promise 
you I’m going to try and get on with Aunt Ethel.” All 
this, and then, in a blurred postscript, the words which 
were the true heart of the letter: 41 How I wish it was you 

I was going to live with!” 

Claudia was appalled at this idea because it echoed what 
she herself had so often felt; that she ought to have Clare 
to live with her. She had told herself again and again— 
in the fierce way in which we do tell ourselves those things 
which are not true—that it was quite impossible because 
Piers and his wife would never give their consent to it, 
knowing all the while that she did not care twopence 
whether they consented or not; that it was perfectly pos- 


REPUTATION 


318 


sible if only she chose to make it so; the real reason being 
that she was too set in her own ways, too engrossed in her 
work, too cowardly to take entire charge of a young girl; 
regulate her life so as to keep up to this one girl’s ideal 
of her. 

Well, anyhow, Clare was safe now, for a time at least, 
far from Styles and all his kind, she thought; pushing the 
sadness, the appeal of the letter, away at the back of her 
mind. Later on, if the child could not be happy, and all 
young people imagined that they were unhappy,—Claudia 
Waring had actually got to that!—the age when one can 
bring oneself to imagine that the sorrows of youth are less 
real than other sorrows—some different arrangement must 
be made. Meanwhile she turned with relief to the compila¬ 
tion of a volume of short stories; warming herself among 
her friends, almost basking in the warm glow of prosperity, 
a popularity which she was beginning to accept as being 
as far as possible from true fame, for genius is never al¬ 
together at ease; vaguely realising that she was luxuriating 
in the second best, and yet as comfortable as one is when 
one turns from the contemplation of a distant sunset to 
one’s own fireside. 

The only thing which really depressed her was Tony’s 
demeanour; and this only vaguely, for there was nothing 
to put one’s finger upon, and he was as attentive as he 
had always been; more so, indeed, showing something 
dreadfully near to punctiliousness. 

In the first week of the New Year—and she wondered if 
this was a so-called “resolution”—he once more asked her 
to marry him; while in refusing him she realised that here 
there was indeed a difference; not in her own words, but 
in the certainty that it was for the last time. 

She even thought—knowing that it was unfair, the sort 
of thing which Tony Fellowes was incapable of—that he 
might be saying to himself: “Well, that’s the end of that! 
I’ve got that off my chest .’t 

Once, and once only, he enquired about Clare; and when 


314 


REPUTATION 


Claudia told him that she was still in the country, re¬ 
marked, quite indifferently, that he supposed that was the 
best place for her; while, when she went on to enquire about 
Blagden, how Blagden was standing it, he said rather 
grimly: ‘ 1 Oh, he’s telling another girl about it now,’ ’ add¬ 

ing with his usual loyalty: “All the same, he’s a jolly 
good fellow, is Blaggy.” 

“He may be, but I can’t say much for his manners,” 
Claudia retorted, really snappy about it, for she had a 
curious fondness, half the result of association, for the boy; 
was hurt that he no longer came to see her; had altogether 
disappeared from—what was it Lathom called it?—her 
‘orbit,’ which now held more women and less men than it 
had ever done before; for the simple reason, or so she 
thought—with a hard little laugh which rather shocked 
herself—that women were no longer afraid of her. 

And Lathom? She was as ignorant of geography as 
most women, but, overcome by a sense of loneliness, she got 
out an atlas, covered with dust, from a bottom shelf, and 
tried to trace out his movements, so far as she could from 
very occasional letters scrawled in pencil upon dirty scraps 
of paper—telling her, in reality, nothing whatever, and 
with no mention of his return. 

As a girl Claudia had more often cried with anger than 
with sorrow; and now, pouncing upon Lathom’s last letter, 
almost as though she were starved, finding that there was 
nothing in it beyond a request to see if the widow of some 
old servant was really as badly off as she seemed to be, 
and if so tell his lawyer to increase her pension, she felt 
her eyes scald with hot tears. 

What was the good of men? What was the good of 
expecting any one of them to do anything for you? she 
thought, rather unjustly considering the substance of the 
letter, when they just went away and left you to battle 
on alone, or—she pulled herself together upon this—if 
they stayed, bored you! 

It was early in February when she got a letter from 


REPUTATION 


315 


Clare; a real letter, badly written and untidy, but full of 
life, of a sort of courageous despair; a high determination 
over what was really an extremely low thing—to wit 
George Styles; very different from the stereotyped little 
notes in which the girl seemed to have slipped into the way 
of thinking of Claudia as though she were much the same 
as any other aunt. 

There was no date or address, though Claudia was thank¬ 
ful to see that the postmark was Leesden; no proper begin¬ 
ning, just “Look here, Claude.” 

“Look here, Claude, I’ve behaved like a little beast to 
you, keeping back things all the time. But there was some¬ 
thing that I thought I ought to fight out alone. You know 
that Blagden boy was always wanting me to marry him. 
But he’s much too young. And besides, I couldn’t—really, 
I couldn’t, Claude. I know you would have liked it—but 
I don’t love him, and I would be even more frightened to 
marry him if I did love him. He sort of flashes about so; 
will you understand what I mean? I’m never at rest for 
a moment with him; he makes me feel so tired. And there’s 
no one else who really wants to marry me and can marry 
me; and I can’t stand being here any longer. I just say 
4 Yes’ to everything. I never say anything for myself. I’d 
grow into an idiot if I did stay here, really Claude; and, 
after all, there is some one who wants me, though he can’t 
marry me, and is just as miserable as I am with no one 
understanding him or anything. 

“I would have told you before, for all the time I have 
kept on saying to myself: 1 Darling Claude did it—darling 
Claude had the courage.’ You see, it was you who’ve 
taught me how stupid and cowardly it is to mind what any¬ 
one says so long as one can make another person happy. I 
owe it all to you, and I think it must be partly that which 
makes you so wonderful—(not caring, I mean). When¬ 
ever I think of you it helps me; that’s why I ought to have 
told you long ago, only really I wasn’t sure. But now I am 
sure, and I am certain that you will stand by me. If you 


316 


REPUTATION 


had not done it first, I think perhaps Pd never be brave 
enough, but now it’s all settled, and we cross to France on 
Friday.” 

There was a postscript: “Of course, it’s Mr. Styles. 
You didn’t like him, but I know you will when you know 
him better, because he is so kind, and really good.” 

And another postscript: “In reading this over it looks 
as though I was going away with him just to please him. 
But I’m not.” 

Something else was scratched out here. It seemed to 
Claudia that it was “I love him,” while she could feel in 
herself exactly what had happened. The child had thought 
that she ought to put in those words, that it was only loyal; 
had actually done so; and then crossed them out because 
they were not really true. 

This epistle reached Claudia by the second post, just 
after eleven on the Tuesday morning, and ringing the bell 
she told her parlour-maid to find her an A. B. C., and pack 
a bag with just sufficient for one night. 

“No, no; of course no evening-dress! A change of shoes 
and stockings, night-things and all that; nothing else.” 

She was impatient with the girl, thought of her as an 
idiot, because she asked the question; could not rest while 
she found the time table, and packed; went fussing after 
her in the middle of a letter to Tony; thinking that it was 
just like Lathom to be away now, when she really did want 
him. 

All this with her brain working like a pair of tailor’s 
shears—two bright blades flashing to and fro. Thursday— 
Friday—Clare was going over to France on Friday. She 
could not tell whether she meant by night or day; the letter 
was posted from Leesden by the last post the evening be¬ 
fore, so anyhow she could not have left until that morning. 
If only she could send a telegram to Clare! That, of course, 
would be the simple and sensible thing to do. But it was 
impossible to be simple and sensible with anyone so easily 
scared; or with Piers and his wife, who would be certain 


REPUTATION 


317 


to open it, for telegrams were family affairs in those days. 

She found the page in the A. B. C. with the trains to 
Overton, snatching it out of the maid’s hands. Clare might 
be coming up to London, and if she waited on there she, 
herself, might meet her at Paddington; but then she 
mightn’t come up to London, might indeed, in her ridicu¬ 
lous emulation of her aunt, do just as she did and make 
straight for Newhaven. If she did that there was possibly 
time to get to Leesden before she left; unless she spent the 
night at Newhaven, which did not seem likely. Anyhow, 
if she sailed from Dover or Folkestone, London was a cer¬ 
tainty—the only certainty. 

There was a train for Overton at one-forty-five; she could 
catch that. There was also a train which got in from 
Overton at two p. m, but supposing Claudia waited for 
that there was no other down train with a connection at the 
Junction. 

She had half wondered why she was beginning to write 
to Tony; she now realised that her impulses were quicker 
and truer than her thoughts. It was Tony who must watch 
all the up trains from Oxford way—for Clare might drive 
to the Junction, not wait for an Overton train—in case 
they crossed on the way. Only a letter was no good; there 
was no time for that. 

She sent the tweeny out with a wire for Tony, who was 
mercifully in town, staying at the Club, telling him to be 
at Paddington ten minutes before her train started; then 
had something to eat, and changed into clothes which were 
fit to travel in while the parlour-maid fetched a cab, and 
was at Paddington at one-fifteen. Here she waited for ten 
minutes, all eyes—in an agony lest Tony should not have 
received her summons, was out when it arrived, as he might 
so well be—then went back, along the endless platform, to 
the telegraph office to send another wire, so that she might 
guard against all mishaps and give him the fullest possible 
instructions and explanations—an expensive affair. 

Three minutes before her train left, however, when she 


318 


REPUTATION 


was already in it craning out of the window, he ran on to 
the platform and up to her. 

“I was out; I only just got your wire. Now, what is 
it?” he said. 

They were both people who went straight to any point, 
and it took her no time to tell him what had happened, and 
what to do. If Clare arrived alone, or with Styles, if she 
was met by Styles, she was to be stopped. ‘‘Don’t mind 
what you do to that beast,” said Claudia. Upon which 
Tony assured her, quite calmly, that she need not worry 
about that; and actually raced off to buy her some papers, 
which he bundled into the carriage just as the train was 
starting, with the remark that they would help to keep her 
from worrying. 

There is a sweep in the line as the Oxford train leaves the 
station, and looking back Claudia could see him, with the 
crowd eddied a little away from him, standing there per¬ 
fectly still, as though he had grown on to the platform, 
very square and solid. 

“It’s a good thing there are no night trains, or he’d be 
there until to-morrow,” she thought. And then: “Really 
he is good and all for a girl he scarcely knows!”—compar¬ 
ing him to Lathom, thinking: “Well, anyhow, he wouldn’t 
go off to the other end of the world and leave me”; while 
later still, clearing her mind of this grievance, a curious 
sort of not altogether pleasant doubt—a feeling as though 
she were being kept in the dark over something or other— 
came to her; with an almost photographic picture of Tony’s 
face, white to the set lips: his whole expression when she 
hinted that he need not be over punctilious in his behaviour 
if he comes across that man Styles; the hard emphasis of 
his quiet: “Don’t you worry about that, my dear.” 


CHAPTER VI 


Once again it was raining when Claudia got out of the 
train at Overton Junction. 

There had been a special market and sale of fat stock, 
too—but at Snaresborough, this time, one more station up 
the main line—and the shepherds and drovers, in great 
shaggy coats glistening with moisture—with their dogs 
pressing their way in between their legs for such shelter 
as they could get, snarling sourly at each other—crowded 
into the waiting-room, where the fire was still blackened 
with slack, devoid of all heat. 

Mingled with the men, who took not the faintest notice 
of them—save for an occasional “Easy there, missus,’’ 
when the corner of a market-basket struck them peculiarly 
sharply in the side—were country women with broad shin¬ 
ing rosy faces; some with children sucking long sticks 
of striped pink and white peppermint or liquorice, tugging 
at their skirts, trampling on their feet; all alike laden with 
packages and baskets in which they had taken eggs and 
butter to market, now packed with blue grocery parcels. 

Wedged in among the crowd, shivering in her nesh town 
way, the smell of beasts and men and dogs rolled back the 
years for Claudia Waring, joining the present to that other 
winter’s evening when she had returned from France; so 
entirely without a join that she could not be sure that she 
was not even now on her way home to explain everything: 
recount to her parents the rights of that tale which had, 
then, seemed so easy of explanation; and had yet remained 
unexplained, a mere matter of conjecture, throughout all 
these years. 

The whole thing was so distinctly with her that she 
found she was once again drawing herself in upon herself, 

319 


320 


REPUTATION 


shrinking from recognition; from some such insolence as 
that taunt in the stable-yard of "The George.” 

“ ’Ope yer left ’is lordship in good ’ealth.” Though 
all that preceded it—the elderly Blagden as a lover, her 
imaginary emotions and general ridiculousness—seemed an 
almost incredible fantasy of the imagination; far and away 
less real than any one of the main incidents in her own 
books. 

She had only been home once since then, on the day of 
her father’s funeral, and they had sent the carriage to the 
station for her—though they did not send her back; while 
no one had spoken to her, or acknowledged her presence 
save for some undefined relation who had been glad of the 
economy of a shared cab to the station, even with the com¬ 
pany of "that dreadful Waring girl,” discoursing the 
whole way to Overton upon the growing cost of funerals, 
so that Claudia came to the conclusion that the only thing 
for it was to get oneself murdered, cut up into cutlets and 
burned in the wash-house grate, or buried in lime in the 
cellar, free of all expense; while she had arrived back at 
her own house—which she had never really thought of as 
home before, for up to then the old Rectory still claimed 
that name—chilled to the soul, numb with misery; deter¬ 
mined that never, never again on any account whatever, 
would she voluntarily approach her own people. 

She had thought that her mother might have softened 
towards her, but she had done nothing of the sort. It was 
not that she was hard, but she was resilient; one bounced 
off her. Besides, how impossible it was to explain anything 
—as impossible as to imagine oneself standing up in the 
midst of that gathering which smelt of sherry and crape 
and saying: "But I never did sleep with that Blagden 
man; never once, whatever you many think, and his own 
wife knew it.” Impossible! Oh, impossible! 

That, however, had been one distinct and—despite the 
fact that it was her own father’s funeral—grotesque inter¬ 
lude, for all funerals are grotesque: while the fact that it 


REPUTATION 


321 


was a magnificent summer’s day, for she arrived and de¬ 
parted without staying the night, shut it off the more com¬ 
pletely from that other day and this, so like each other in 
every sort of way. Why, even Clare—she jerked herself 
back to the present—Clare might be herself. 

Of course, no one knew her at * ‘ The George , 9 ’ where there 
was a younger and smarter ostler; though the horse, really, 
as she found upon enquiry, a direct descendant, might have 
been the very one that had dragged her home twenty years 
earlier. 

She waited in the parlour this time, and had a cup of 
tea; for a woman does not hug her own discomfort when 
she is close upon forty; thinking, even in the midst of the 
worst crisis, “Well, anyhow, there’s time for a cup of tea!” 

As she was stepping into the fly—unmistakably the same 
fly—the landlady who had come out with a lantern glanced 
at her curiously; but, for all that, with nothing more than 
the usual curiosity of country people in regard to any 
well-dressed stranger; and Claudia was well dressed—no 
mistake about it, either. “A fur coat as must ’a’ cost a 
matter o’ fifty pound, if it cost a penny,” was what Mrs. 
Shanklin said, later on in the evening, under stating it by 
half or more: “An’ Mr. Waring not so much as sending 
the carriage to meet her.” 

“Mayhaps she wouldn’t let ’im ’ave the ’osses out in 
case o’ the rain and all, givin’ them too much of an ap¬ 
petite,” remarked her husband with fine satire, upon which 
his better half snorted: she knew the value of money her¬ 
self—no one better—but she would not care to be as mean 
as the present Mrs. Waring, who was, in her opinion, no 
lady. 

The drive seemed intolerably long, and Claudia was 
wearied out by anxiety, by emotion, by the continual sharp 
sting of memory, like the touch of a harsh finger upon an 
inflamed nerve. 

The road was a tunnel of darkness when they passed 
through the woods. Though it was a wet night, it was 


322 


REPUTATION 


mild enough out here, far milder than it had been in the 
draughty station; and Claudia had one of the windows 
down so that the old familiar scent of wet beech-woods, rot¬ 
ting leaf-mould and beech-mast came in through it in 
fragrant gusts, tempering the frowsty odours of the ancient 
fly—mildewed cloth and straw and stale tobacco. 

Why—oh why did one remember everything so dread¬ 
fully? Remember so that memory was like a wound, even 
in connection with things which had never seemed to matter 
in the very least. 

There was the broken, coughing note of a pheasant some¬ 
where in the depths of the covert, the cry of an owl. 
Claudia had heard owls and pheasants again and again 
since her girlhood’s day, and not cared twopence—unless 
it were to remark, coming fresh to the country after months 
in London: “I say, that sounds jolly!”—but it was dif¬ 
ferent here, altogether different. 

“If I hear a fox bark I think I shall die,” she said to 
herself, in her ridiculously exaggerated way; feeling as a 
nervous woman will sometimes feel when she sees a man 
put a gun to his shoulder: “If it goes off it will kill me.” 

Then she heard it, and it thrilled her through and 
through. “I couldn’t have believed I cared so much,” she 
said to herself; and immediately began planning out a small 
house in the old neighbourhood, amid all the old, beloved 
sights and sounds; a house to come to in the summer 
months. But no, she could not limit it to that alone, with 
the autumn and winter almost equally wonderful. It 
seemed, indeed, that she could never live in London again. 
She would stay altogether in the country, pick up all the 
threads of youth afresh, be her best, work her best. If 
there was not a house vacant of the size she wanted, she 
would build one; one could do anything with money. A 
sudden exciting memory of what was once the dower-house 
of the old Leesgrove Hall, deep in the very heart of the 
wood and used as two cottages in her day, returned to her. 
Why not buy that and turn it back to something of its old 


REPUTATION 


323 


use? She had it half furnished with period furniture, 
curtains and all, when the fly turned in at the Rectory 
drive, jerking her back to reality. 

There were the dark shrubs at either side, the smell of 
laurels . . . Oh, but she did not like it after all—hated it, 
hated it: would not come back and plant herself here in the 
country, where there was never any sort of privacy, where 
one was being continually picked to pieces and fingered 
over, for anything on earth. 

She paid the driver and watched the cab drive away 
before she rang the bell, grimly determined that she would 
not allow herself to be balked, packed off; or so pricked in 
her pride that she re-entered the cab, drove away without 
seeing Clare. 

“One thing’s certain, I can’t walk to the station, so 
that’s that,” she said to herself; only too well aware of her 
own weakness, inclination to something as petty as huffi¬ 
ness: the way she had of saying, “Oh, well, it’s your busi¬ 
ness, ’ ’ whatever it was, dropping the whole thing. 

It was all like a cheap chromo-lithograph, she thought, 
as the door was opened with a flood of light across the 
steps: the usual flood of light, the comfortably-furnished, 
commonplace hall with the glowing stove—for whatever 
Mrs. Piers chose to save upon, she never stinted herself 
in comfort—the trim maid; so exactly like other trim maids 
in Christmas supplements that she might have been im¬ 
pressed off a block with thousands of others and then, above 
all, Claudia herself on the steps, “The Returned Penitent.” 
For they were not always in rags, these penitents, not by 
any means: there was a dreadful old song that she had once 
heard the men singing at a harvest festival—not in Leesden, 
for no such thing would have been allowed, but in some 
Leicestershire village: “They drinks the champagne wot 
she sends them, but they never speaks her name.” 

It came back to her then with the impression of the thing 
as a whole, the possible addition of snow and holly; so 
that, despite all her depression and fatigue, there was an 


324 


REPUTATION 


edge of laughter in her voice as she enquired for Miss Clare. 

The maid hesitated, peering out into the darkness beyond 
her, visibly wondered how she had got there; as put out 
by the fact of any younger member of the family being 
enquired for, as Miles himself might have been twenty 
years earlier. 

“I want to see Miss Clare. Will you tell her it’s very 
particular—Miss Waring, please,’’ said Claudia; and added 
sharply, with the sudden fear that she had come too late 
like a sword in her heart: < ‘ She’s not away from home, is 
she?” 

“No, marm; Miss Clare is at home. If you’ll just come 
inside, I’ll enquire.” 

As the girl was turning someone called to her: 

“Warren, Warren, who’s that? The master can’t see 
anyone now; and do shut the door, the wind’s blowing 
straight into the drawing-room. 

The drawing-room door itself was open; Claudia could 
feel the moist fresh air drawn in past her. There had been 
all sorts of fusses about that direct draught in the old 
days, a constant talk of building a little vestibule sideways 
on to the hall door to counteract it. 

The maid had crossed the hall and was speaking to her 
mistress at the drawing-room door. 

“Who—who, do you say? How very extraordinary, and 
at this time of night! Did you tell her Miss Clare was not 
well ? Miss—Miss—what ? Oh, you must be mistaken! ’ ’ 

It was a high, decided voice, every syllable distinct. The 
very sound of it rubbed Claudia’s fur the wrong way. 
She was perfectly sure that she would dislike her sister- 
in-law; disliked her appearance, at least, as much as her 
voice as she crossed the hall and came towards her: a tall, 
flat woman with a tight fringe-net and tight mouth; a 
striped flannel blouse; a very high collar and a man’s tie, 
such as had gone out of fashion in England at least two 
years before the end of the war. 

“I think there must be some mistake.” She moved 


REPUTATION 


325 


towards Claudia with a long stride, as though she were off 
upon a twelve-mile walk on which there was no stopping 
her. “The maid tells me-" 

“That's all right," said Claudia, with a hard briskness 
which matched the other's. “I’m Claudia Waring, your 
sister-in-law, you know." She rubbed it in grimly, for 
here was the sort of person who had no power on earth 
to hurt her. “And I want to see Clare." 

“Who do you say?" the coarse mouth with its long 
upper lip tightening like a rat-trap. 

“Oh, but you know—Clare Stevens, your niece and mine, 
more mine than yours, come to that. 

“Miss Stevens’ not well, she’s not been downstairs all 

day, she-" The other woman stammered and broke off 

confusedly: for all her aggressive boniness there seemed to 
he no backbone to her. “Besides, you’ve no business 
here." Her voice rose hysterically. “I told my husband 
when I married him that I would never consent to be mixed 
up with any sort of scandal, and he quite agreed with me. 
You had no right to come at all. I don’t know I m sure 
I don’t know—what you were thinking of, to dare ! 

“That doesn’t matter. I didn’t come to see you; I came 
to see Clare." 

“To see Clare—to see Clare! What has Clare got to 
do with you, I’d like to know?" 

“Well, she happens to be my sister’s child." 

“That makes no difference. Your own father and mother 
would have nothing to do with you—you must have known 
that or you would not have hidden yourself away all these 
years, and my husband feels as I do. You’ve done nothing 
for Clare or any of them. It’s I who’ve paid for every¬ 
thing Clare ever had, who’ve been like a mother to her. 

“Oh!" said Claudia; then looked her full in her light, 
prominent eyes for a moment; added: “How very in¬ 
teresting!" and moved forward into the hall. 

“You’ve no business-" 

“My business is with Clare alone. She’s in my old room, 



326 


REPUTATION 


isn’t she? The room to the left at the top of the stairs. 
Considering everything, how delicate she is and all, con¬ 
sidering that you have no children of your own,” she added 
bitterly, “you might have given her a better room than 
that—a room facing south. She looks to me as though 
she were starving for sunshine.” 

“What do you mean? How do you know about Clare— 
what room she’s in? If she’s been seeing you without 
telling me—if she’s been deceiving me-” Mrs. Warn¬ 

ing’s voice was high and raucous; there was something in 
it which reminded Claudia of Miss Fair; she was altogether 
of the same sort of stamp, and she put her down, scornfully 
enough, as Manchester. 

‘ ‘ Oh, do be quiet! ’ ’ she said, all raw with irritation; then 
added something, by way of preserving her own self- 
respect, about having had a tiresome journey, being very 
tired. 

“ I ’ll take off my coat if you don’t mind, ’ ’ she said. 41 It 
was always the same with this hall, too hot or too cold. I 
remember how stifled I used to feel coming in on a cold 
winter’s day.” She had pulled herself together, was 
brightly conversational. After all, this dreary woman did 
not matter a hang, nothing mattered apart from Clare. 
She was back at that now. She must see Clare, tell her of 
everything, take her home to London with her, make a fuss 
of her; avoid any sort of quarrel with anyone till that was 
accomplished. 

“Now, if you’ll just let me run upstairs to her—and then 
perhaps you can give me a bed for this one night,” she 
said, and added: “You needn’t sit at table with me, you 
know,” remembering that last meal on a tray. 

She half thought that Mrs. Piers must smile at this, for 
it sounded so ridiculous; as ridiculous as it had been for 
anyone to speak of her as having hidden herself away, with 
her portrait continually in the papers—why, even during 
the war she had still been there, mixed up with V. C.’s and 
Boer leaders and other really interesting people. 



REPUTATION 


327 


But her sister-in-law only stared: in the resentful way in 
which stupid people do stare at anything they cannot 
understand, as though it has no business to exist. 

* 1 1 absolutely refuse to let you see Clare, * * she said; and 
moved to the bottom of the stairs. 

1 ‘Oh, come now, that’s nonsense!” retorted Claudia, try¬ 
ing to speak pleasantly, for a physical conflict was not to be 
thought of. ‘ ‘ Clare’s not a child. It’s not even as though 
she were your own niece; come to that, she’s a nearer rela¬ 


tion to me than she is to you.” 

“I’ve stood in the relationship of a mother to her all 
these years, and I positively forbid her holding any com¬ 
munication whatever with a person of your character,” 
said Mrs. Waring. “How you could be brazen enough to 
come back here at all in the way you have done is past me.” 

“Oh, come now,” said Claudia, with a distinct sense of 
pleasure in the aggravating repetition, her own smile; a 
smile which, or so it seemed, was too much for Mrs. Piers. 
To think of this sister-in-law, all bones and hard aggression, 
as a bladder seemed ridiculous, but there it was. Claudia’s 
smile, her pleasant politeness, pricked her. In anything 
like a loud-voiced wrangle, coarse recriminations, she would 
have held her own; but she was beaten here. Clear in 
Claudia’s mind rose up that column of the Morning Post 
with the announcement of Piers’ marriage, softening and 
thrilling her at the time, for she had been very fond of this 
only brother of hers: “Piers de Courcy Waring, Lieut., 
R. N., only son of the Reverend Septimus Waring,” etc., 
etc., “to Ethel May, only daughter of George Hoskins, Esq., 

0 f_Z ” of, something or other—Manchester or Liverpool 

... No, no, Sheffield, that was it; neither Manchester or 
Liverpool, but Sheffield. 

“I suppose my brother’s at home?” she said pleasantly. 
“Supposing I see him first-” „ 

“Piers has nothing whatever- Oh, well . . . lvirs. 

Waring gave a shrug, as stupid and clumsy as are most 
translations from the French, and moved away from the 


328 


REPUTATION 


stairs towards the study door. There was Claudia’s 
chance; but she did not take it, overcome by a sudden fancy 
for dignity and order; and after all, thank goodness, 
Clare was safe in her own room. 

‘‘He always writes his sermon between tea and dinner 
on Thursday night, there’s so much for him to see to on 
Friday and Saturday; everybody so continually asking his 
advice, and so many committees, a magistrate and all.” 
The ridiculous creature seemed to be bolstering herself up 
by an endeavour to impress Claudia with her husband’s 
importance. “He won’t at all like to be disturbed.” 

“Oh, well, I’m afraid he’ll have to be disturbed,” said 
Claudia; and moved forward with so much determina¬ 
tion that Mrs. Piers took one stride to get between her and 
the study door, flinging it wide—as though she would not 
have the interloper so much as opening a door in her 
house. 

‘ ‘ Piers, there’s a person here who says she’s your sister. ’ ’ 

The Reverend Piers Waring was standing, half turned 
away, fingering some one of the trifles upon the mantel¬ 
shelf. Claudia had an idea that he had been nearer the 
door; moved away too suddenly to collect himself suffi¬ 
ciently to sit down at his writing-table. Also that he had 
heard something of what was going on, was too cowardly 
to come out and face it. 

He had been a slim, fair, fresh-faced, boyish-looking 
second-lieutenant when Claudia last saw him. He was 
fresh-faced still, very—oh, very like—his father, only less 
firm in every sort of way, more inclined to softness, to a 
sort of sagging; bald, with a fringe of fine, straight hair 
which might have been grey or merely fair; very pleasant 
and comely-looking, but giving the impression, in contrast 
to that mental picture of the Rural Dean—so clear in 
Claudia’s mind—of something that had rather petered out; 
something with altogether less stuffing to it. The queer 
thought came to her, as he moved towards her, holding out 
his hand, that she could not imagine him as drinking port. 


REPUTATION 


329 


“Well, Claudia, this is a surprise!” The hand was 
plump and very soft, the sort of hand that one seems to 
sink into like a feather bed. He gave one quick, sidelong 
glance at his wife; then fixed his kindly blue eyes full upon 
Claudia, with a rather palpable effort. 

“Well, anyhow he means to behave decently; he’s man 
enough for that,” she thought with relief. Then suddenly 
warming to him, * 1 Good old Piers! ’’ 

She took a step forward, meeting him half-way and 
instinctively raised her face, for he was a tall man like his 
father. The Leesden people used to say that he was really 
too tall for the Navy, imagining a naval man as con¬ 
tinually going under something which they called 
“hatches.” 

Some mysterious current passed between the brother and 
sister as they kissed each other, and she clung to him for 
one moment, while he patted her back and murmured, 
“There, there!” just exactly as her father might have done. 
Then drew back, pointing to a chair, saying, “Won’t you 
sit down?” in a suddenly formal manner, as though she 
were one of his parishioners. 

He did not so much as glance at his wife, but he was 
feeling her there, Claudia was sure of this; still standing, 
aggressively determined not to sit down in the same room 
with “a fallen woman” if she could help it. 

“Sit down, Ethel,” said Piers suddenly in what Claudia 
thought of as his old ward-room voice; startling his wife 
who sat down, rather suddenly; one hand tightly clasped 
over the other on her lap, the knuckles shining and red¬ 
dened. One could not say in a book that certain sorts of 
women—and it was entirely the mental and moral attitude 
which did it—had certain sorts of knuckles, for it was 
sure to be pounced upon by the critics as one of “those 
facile generalisations,” but there it was, thought Claudia: 
no woman excepting a woman precisely like Ethel could 
have knuckles like that, any more than she could have the 
sort of feet she had. 


330 


REPUTATION 


Claudia, who was carrying her long fur coat, flung it 
over the back of her chair as she sat down, so that the 
grey and rose-coloured brocade of the lining formed a 
background to her face; her small head, in the black velvet 
toque shaped like a Russian head-dress, and edged with fur, 
just showed the dark widows peak beneath it. Her face 
was like a cameo, freshly cut and clear; her hair very trim 
about the ears, in smooth waves. She wore small, close 
pearl ear-rings, and there was cream-tinted lace swathed 
high about her neck. The very look of her made Mrs. Piers 
"Waring angry; though she could not have said why, for 
nothing could have been plainer than the smooth black 
cloth dress, what they called “faced cloth,’’ fastened with 
innumerable small black silk buttons from throat to hem— 
though there was an extravagance in that. And who ever 
saw such ridiculous boots, buttoned kid, and long and 
pointed? She must be wickedly proud of her feet to sit 
like that, with them stuck out, crossed in front of her; 
nothing to be proud of, either, for they were long feet— 
fives, if they were anything. 

The Rector was fidgeting about, turning to the mantel¬ 
piece, picking up first one pipe and then another; choosing 
one and beginning to fill it. 

“I really came down to see Clare,” said Claudia. 

“What—how—do you know Clare?” Piers turned 
round staring, not quite naturally. 

“Oh yes, I met her in London when she was nursing, 
we have mutual friends. One meets everyone in London, 
you know, sooner or later; I seem to be always running 
against relations—the Mannerings, and the Hebberton lot 
and all—how frightfully fat Annie Hebberton has got, 
Piers, and she’s only the same age as I am—at least she used 
to be.” 

“Clare never mentioned your name, never told us she 
had met you.” 

“Didn’t she? Oh, well, I dare say she thought it better 
not. . . . Piers, how strange it is to be back here! To 


REPUTATION 


331 


see it all the same; yon standing there in front of the fire, 
smoking just as Papa used to do . . . Only no Granny to 
keep us in our places ... no anybody, really; though 
everything’s the same: the same furniture, the same car¬ 
pet, even the same smell coming into the hall. You know 
that queer, distinctive smell that houses do have?” 

“By Jove, Claudia, if that isn't you all over!” Piers 
broke into a short laugh. “You wrinkle up your nose 
when you laugh; too, just as you used to do when you were 
a kid. . . . What a one you always were for smells! Do 
you remember how you used to say you could follow a 
fox to earth?” 

“And do you remember how we used to kill water- 
rats, or try to kill them, with lumps of lead stuck on to 
the end of sticks, and how difficult it was to make it 
stick ? ” 

“It beats me how we used to do it.” ? 

“Melt down the weights Mama had on her dresses; don t 
you remember feeling for them round the edges of her 
coats in the dark wardrobe and cutting them off, terrified 
of being caught?” 

“Oh, I don't mean that—the shying straight, 1 mean; 
how we used to hit the little beggars.’ 

“I presume that all this was before you ran away with 
the Marquess of Blagden,” interposed Mrs. Piers; while 
with some fragment of her mind always on her work, 
Claudia thought: 

“If I put anything quite so venomous as that in a 
book they’d say I exaggerated it.” But the blow struck 
home; all the more because, at that moment, she had been 
back in the past with this only brother whom, apart from 
Francie, she had cared for more than any member of 
the family; though for all that she faced her sister-in- 

law smiling. ,, , 

“I suppose it was,” she said, I suppose it would be, 

anyhow, eh, Piers?” . 

But the Rector had turned to the mantelpiece, was hd- 


332 


REPUTATION 


dling with the things upon it, just as his father had done, 
twenty years before; the back of his neck crimson. 

“He’s all in streaks, like bacon; half Navy, half 
Church,” thought Claudia. She was really interested, on 
the top of herself. But below all this there was that 
sense of being raw; not altogether wounded, but horribly 
grazed by the chafe of memories, Ethel’s ill-bred shaft. 

“Well, if I can see Clare? . . . And then, Piers, I’m 
afraid you’ll have to put me up for the night; there doesn’t 
seem any sort of way of getting back to town.” She 
addressed herself to her brother, deliberately, ignoring 
his wife, taking a pleasure in doing so. 

“Why of course!” Piers swung round: it was evident 
that he was relieved at being able to get on to something 
which called forth the ordinary commonplace virtues of 
life, such as hospitality. “Ethel, you’ll see about a room 
for Claudia; and isn’t it about time we got dressed for 
dinner? . . . Stay? Why, of course you’ll stay, we’re 
only too glad to have you, aren’t we, Ethel?” He rubbed 
his hands, turning from one to another. “You’ve brought 
down some sort of a kit, I suppose.” 

“I brought a bag, just enough for the night,” said 
Claudia; and rising from her chair, glanced at her sister- 
in-law, smiling, wondering what she was going to do; if 
she would have grit enough, disliking her as she did, to 
speak out, say that she would not have her in the house. 

“Ethel,” said Piers, “now then what about that room?” 

It was put in the form of a question; but for all that, 
it was a command, with the sailor side uppermost, and his 
wife rose from her chair like an automaton, rang the bell, 
remained standing until the maid came, then gave her 
the order for a certain room to be prepared. Claudia knew 
it: the small room on the top of the first flight of stairs, 
the sort of room always associated with poor, unmarried 
relations, or Piers’ boy friends. A room without a ward¬ 
robe or long glass—“How like a woman!” thought 
Claudia; then, “I wish we weren’t like that.” 


REPUTATION 


333 


“Oh, but I say! why not the blue room? It’s ever 
so much the cosiest,” protested Piers. 

The maid hesitated, glancing from one to another. 

“As it is only for one night, the other’s the least trouble 
to get ready,” said Mrs. Waring, and her husband gave in, 
with a growl over the word “trouble”: “With the house 
chock full of servants-” 

“Anyhow, there’s got to be a fire—see that the fire’s 
lighted, Mary, and there’s hot water and all that. Hadn’t 
you better see about it yourself, Ethel?” 

“You seem to have given the order.” Mrs. Piers’ 
voice was acid. 

“She doesn’t mean to leave me alone with him,” thought 
Claudia; and then, as she had thought so many years 
before with her father: “I could do anything with him 
if I could get him to myself.” 

They were all standing now, in an awkward triangle. 

“Well, what about getting dressed?” enquired the 
Rector. 

“Don’t you think as I’ve not brought a change, can 
do no more than wash my hands and tidy my hair, I 
might as well run up and see Clare while you people are 
dressing?” suggested Claudia, for the direct realisation 
that after all it was Clare whom she had come to see— 
must see, and why—had been there all the time, under 
this ridiculous and petty series of cross-currents, helping 
her to keep her temper, not really mind anything: “I’ve 
something I particularly want to say to her.” 

“I won’t have that! I won’t have it!” cried Mrs. 
Waring with sudden fierceness. “I refuse to have Clare’s 
mind corrupted.” 

“Ethel!” 

“It’s no good saying ‘Ethel’ to me in that tone. I tell 
you I won’t have it. I don’t often put my foot down, 
but I do put it down here.” 

“S-sh, Ethel, be quiet!” 

“I won’t be quiet, I refuse to be quiet, hushed down 


334 


REPUTATION 


like a child! Corrupted, that’s what it is—that’s what 
people like that do. Clare’s changed enough as it is . . . 
Oh, yes, I knew there was something going on, I’m not 
a fool, though you choose to treat me like one—completely 
changed! And no wonder either. People like that”— 
she did not look at Claudia, expressed her by * ‘ people like 
that” alone; but the shoulder nearest to her was raised, 
twisted a little on one side as though she were sloughing 
her off—“don’t only harm themselves—the pity is that 
they don’t harm themselves, do for themselves,” she 
added vindictively, “instead of that they’re the ones who 
always seem to prosper. But they ruin everyone they 
come in contact with. It’s like carrying the plague, like 
people with typhoid germs, I tell you; only much worse, 
far worse! For it’s the soul and not the body that they 
ruin. You mayn’t believe me, but I know what I’m talk¬ 
ing about,” she went on passionately, “and it’s impos¬ 
sible for any young girl to see much of a woman like 
that—like your sister—without being in some way in¬ 
fected. 

‘ ‘ I suppose I’ve got to give way about her staying here— 
to consent to have such a person, a person whom no decent 
woman would voluntarily have in her house, thrust upon 
me—a nice example to the village, a pretty example to the 
village, I must say!” 

Her every limb jerked as though she were afflicted 
with a sudden, ungovernable attack of St. Vitus’ dance, 
the only thing impressive about her was her deadly 
earnestness. 

“But it seems that people who do wrong—people who 
have no sort of respect for decency, running off with 
other women’s husbands—can do as they like. And of 
course if you choose to insult your own wife before every¬ 
one by insisting upon her sleeping under the same roof 
with, sitting down to table with, a woman who’s been . . . 
Well, goodness knows what she’s been doing all these 
years, for don’t tell me that people dress like that out 


REPUTATION 335 

of writing novels—don’t tell me that—novels no one ever 
reads, either.” 

The harsh voice went grinding on and on incoherently, 
losing all control, all point in what it was saying; so that 
Claudia thought of ungreased cart-wheels running down 
hill, with an empty van at the back of them. 

“Why there’s not a single one of her so-called books 
in the Overton library; people I know have asked for 
them—just out of curiosity, not that they’d read them— 
and they don’t even know them. If they did they wouldn’t 
have them there, or in any place where decent people 
go, either. But let me tell you this, when it’s a question 
of right or wrong I can hold my own as well as any other 
woman, and thank goodness, my parents brought me up 
to know which was which. ‘Never shirk an unpleasant 
duty, my dear’—that’s what my father used to say to 
me. It’s a mercy he’s dead! . . . It’s an awful thing 
for any woman to come to say of her own parents, but 
it’s a mercy they’re both dead. It would break their hearts 
if they knew what I have to put up with now. ‘It’s not 
a brilliant match’—that’s what my father said; ‘no one can 
say that it is—for an only daughter, and with all I have 
to leave her. . . .’ Oh yes, you may sneer at my family 
if you like.” 

There was not the trace of a sneer mingled with the 
frightful embarrassment visible upon the Rector’s face; 
all the same, it was to him that she addressed—rather at 
him that she shot—this stream of accusation. 

“Is she afraid to look at me, or won’t she condescend 
so far?” wondered Claudia; and then, “The cad! The 
awful cad! How could he marry her?” 

“_but all the same you can’t pretend that you’ve 

not made use of my money, now you’ve got it.” 

This was too much. “I’ll go up and see Clare, said 
Claudia, and turned to the door; but the other woman, 
with one of her plunging strides, was there before her, 
her back against the panelling. 


336 


REPUTATION 


“I refuse to let you see her, I absolutely refuse,” she 
cried, and then, to Claudia’s amazement, hurst into tears. 

“She’s been everything to me; it would be different if 
I’d ever had any children of my own. But if Clare was 
to do wrong, disgrace herself like—like—like you’ve done, 
it would kill me! . . . And how do we know 
what she’s taught her already?” She slid away 
to the third person, as though she could no longer 
bear to address herself to Claudia, direct. < ‘ How 
do we know what she’s put into her head, seeing her on 
the sly in London in that fashion, teaching her to deceive 
us all? . . . Clare, who used to tell me everything? I 
knew there was something wrong; I knew it, and it was like 
a knife in my heart. Ever since she’s been back she has 
been changed towards us. I told you so, I told you, I told 
you. ...” She turned towards her husband, thrusting 
forward her head, throwing out her large bony hands. 
“But you wouldn’t listen to me; just because it was you 
who let her go off on that nursing, mixing herself up 
with all sorts of people; you would not acknowledge that 
anything wrong could come of it. But now it’s I who’ve 
got to be responsible; I who’ve got to stand out—as I 
would not stand out for myself—for what I think right. 
How can I let that woman go up to that girl’s room, say 
what she likes to her—whispering and confabulating with 
her? You don’t care, I know, it’s nothing to you: Come 
to that you don’t really care for anything—in heaven or 
earth. You were in the Navy, and you did not care for 
that; you’re in the Church now, and you don’t care for 
that.” Her voice rose. “You’ve not got it in you to 
care.” 

11 Ethel, you’ve no right whatever to say things like 
that,” cried the Rector; but with all the authority, all the 
fight, so completely gone out of him that Claudia thought: 

“She’s right: he doesn’t care. There’s nothing to him. 
More tc her for some reason or other—something that 
really bites home.” 


REPUTATION 


337 


She got it the next moment, for with a gesture that was, 
in its way, grand, despite all her ungainliness, redeeming 
for that moment the utter commonplaceness of the whole 
woman, her sister-in-law added: 

“Why, I love her—I love her! I worship the very 
ground she treads on!” she cried: and then, as though 
pulling herself together, ashamed of the one outburst 
which made her seem almost likeable, she added sullenly, 
“It's I who’ve had to do all the disagreeable things; it’s 
I who’ve always had to discipline her; prevent her from 
doing what she’s set her heart on, however much it cost 
me—interfere as I’ll have to do now. But all the same, 
it’s I who care for her—always have cared! Why, you 
.—you don’t care for anyone but yours°lf—your own 
comfort—don’t I know that?” she cried, and added 
bitterly: “Who would know it if I didn’t?” 

“All this b&s nothing to do with it,” said the Rector 
miserably, mumbling where his father would have boomed. 

“It has got to do with it, it has. . . . And if you go 
against me now, I’ll walk out of the house and never 
come back, I give you fair warning, you’ll do without me 
and my income,” it seemed as though she could not keep 
away from that. “I’ve been a good wife to you, but all 
the same I have my own feelings, my own convictions.” 

“What am I to do?” Piers Waring turned towards 
his sister with a gesture of despair. “I ask you? You 
see the position I’m in between the two of you. His 
tone was suddenly peevish. “There’s no doing anything 
with women if they once start fighting. . . . And after 
all, I must say my wife’s in the right, Claudia. You be¬ 
haved frightfully, scandalously! The whole family felt 
the effect of it. It wasn’t very pleasant for me, either, I 
can tell you that: the papers full of it, an’ all—if only 
it had been anyone but a man in—in—um that position! 
Not that it would have made it any better in the eyes of 
God. But there you are, you never thought of anyone 
but yourself—even your Maker. No wonder I had to 


338 


REPUTATION 


leave the Navy, after such a scandal—spoiling my career. 
And people talk of it still. Sometimes I come into a room, 
even now, and seeing how confused people are, realising 
the way in which they begin to talk of something else, I 
know that they’ve been saying . . . goodness knows what. 
I was willing to let bygones be bygones, but if you two 
begin quarrelling-” 

'‘Oh, do be quiet, Piers!” quite suddenly Claudia did 
not care what he said or did. She was tired out with 
both of them: bludgeoned so that she was in the half- 
stupefied state of a passenger in a storm-tossed boat, unable 
to judge between Providence and the captain; not caring 
who is at fault; with but one idea to be out of it all. 
“Ethel, look here, supposing we all go and wash our hands, 
anyhow,” she gave a little gesture of disgust, as though 
she were actually soiled by the scene they were going 
through; ‘‘and I’ll wait to see Clare until after dinner, 
or perhaps to-morrow morning. We can talk things over 
first, you and I.” 

“I tell you she’s not well. She’s been in bed all day 
with a bad headache. I can’t have her upset, and any¬ 
how ...” Mrs. Piers hesitated, twisting her bony hands 
hands together. “Well, anyhow you can’t see her be¬ 
cause she’s got a headache,” she went on flatly. And 
then, as though realising the anti-climax, added: “Even 
if you were the sort of person that it was proper for her 
to see.” 

“Well, let’s leave it at that,” said Claudia, and picked 
up her coat: then, as the sound of the gong boomed through 
the house, the gong which she had always thought of as 
so like her father’s voice, she added: “If I may just 
wash my hands and tidy myself.” 

“That’s right, that’s right,” cried the Rector; “you 
must be starving. Come along now, come along. That’s 
capital, capital—we’ll none of us wait to change.” His 
relief was evident; everything was ‘‘ capital, capital, ’ ’ that 
did not force him to assert himself beyond the limits of 


REPUTATION 


339 


that “sort of toy ward-room manner/’ as Claudia now 
thought of it: He caught her elbow and pinched it. “Do 
you remember your funny-bone, how you used to hate to 
have it touched ? Come along now—sorry I spoke hastily, 
old girl, difficult position and all! I’ll show you your 
room; though of course you know it, know every room 
in the house—rather small, but cosy little room, eh?” 

They moved up the stairs in an awkward bunch of 
three, and once again Claudia thought: “She doesn’t 
mean to leave us together.” 

The fire was burning, smokily enough. Mrs. Piers poked 
it, stooping as little as possible; then felt the side of the 
hot-water can: “I hope you’ll find everything you want.” 
she said stiffly; and, turning, hesitated in the door¬ 
way until her husband moved out of the room in front of 
her. 

Ten minutes later, as Claudia left her room, her sister- 
in-law came down the stairs from the upper storey. "I 
might as well tell you now,” she said, “as Clare has par¬ 
ticularly asked me to do so—and I assure you that you 
can take my word for it—she does not wish to see you.” 

“Oh!” said Claudia, and hesitated, one narrow satin- 
clad foot pointed out over the first step, gazing at the other 
woman gravely; in reality as oblivious of her as though she 
had been a part of the stairs, thinking hard, weighing one 
thing against another. 

“You don’t believe me?” 

“Oh yes, I believe you right enough.” Claudia turned 
and began to move down the stairs, treading very care¬ 
fully and deliberately as though each step were the result 
of mature deliberation; coming to the conclusion, by the 
time she reached the bottom, that the reason for such a 
message—which was really all that mattered could, after 
all, wait until the next day. 

The truth was she felt tired out, too completely numbed 
with fatigue to make any further effort. “I’ll have to do 
my thinking early to-morrow morning,” she thought. “I 


340 REPUTATION 

shall only make a mess of it if I try to insist upon seeing 
the child now.” 

She slept soundly; the sleep of a person who is, for the 
time being, sapped out, body and mind. 

She was still sunk in slumber, as deep as though she had 
been drugged, when she became aware of someone standing 
at her bedside, speaking to her, shouting at her, running 
on and on: the repetition of the words: Wake up, oh, do 

wake up! Don't you hear what I'm saying? Don't you 
realise what I mean?" Then: “If it hadn t been for 
you, it would never have happened." And again, 
strangely enough—and the unreason of this struck her, 
even through those depths into which she seemed to be 
dragged by a leaden weight of sleep—rising to the surface 
a little, and constantly drawn back again—“There's no 
one can do anything but you. Can't you wake up? Did 
anyone ever see anything like this, to go on sleeping in this 
way—sleeping, sleeping, not caring for anything!" 

‘ ‘ Can't it wait until morning ? ’' Claudia could hear her 
own voice, blurred and muffled, blanketed with sleep. 

“Why it is morning! Twelve minutes past seven!" 
Even through the dreams which came back and back, like 
a multi-coloured scarf waved before her face, Claudia was 
conscious of the ludicrous exactitude of this “twelve min¬ 
utes" at such an unearthly hour. 

But the next words effectually awakened her, startling 
her so that she sat bolt upright in bed. 

“She must have started soon after six, oaught the 
seven o'clock train to Paddington, the train that stops at, 
Oxford.' ’ It was precise, but incoherent: that ‘ 4 she, ’' with 
no name mentioned: and then the detail, which was not 
of the slightest importance to anyone, for one did not even 
have to change there—“the train that stops at Oxford"— 
talk of tithes, myrrh and cummin! 

But for all that Claudia knew what it was. Clare had 
gone. 

Good God, what a fool!—what a double-distilled, selfish 


REPUTATION 


341 


fool she had been! To race down here and then, just be¬ 
cause she was tired, dispirited, to let the whole thing slide 
in that way. 

She put down one hand under the bedclothes, pulled her 
nightdown round her ankles and swung her feet out of bed; 
stretched out her hand to the dressing-table—for every¬ 
thing was within reach in that ridiculous little room which 
always used to be known as “the Prophets Chamber”— 
and gathering up her brushes and comb and hairpins, be¬ 
gan to do her hair. 

“There’s another train up at eight forty-eight, isn’t 
there? Oh, but of course there is!” Mrs. Piers’ long, 
horse-like face, her dropped jaw, her prominent eyes, the 
colour of bottled gooseberries, or so Claudia described them 
later, exasperated her so that she could have taken her by 
her bony shoulders and shaken her. She thought with dis¬ 
gust and pity of her brother—who used to be so fond of 
pretty, dainty girls—awaking each morning to that face 
upon the pillow at his side, those metal curling-pins, like 
young rat-traps. “Ring the bell, will you? I suppose 
I can have some hot water, and breakfast at half-past 
seven—anything will do. There’s no time for a bath, 
worse luck! By the way, I wonder if you have put in 
a bathroom.” She did not know why she said this; but 
somehow or other it helped her to exasperate her sister- 
in-law, seem not to care. 

“But Clare’s run away!” cried Mrs. Piers. “You don’t 
understand. She’s run away. She’s left a note upon 
her dressing-table to say-” 

“My good woman, of course she did; they always do. 
For goodness’ sake ring the bell, and clear out of this: 
I must get dressed. Only see about the breakfast,” cried 
Claudia, taut with impatience. 

“You don’t seem to care about anything! That’s just 
like you . . . just like all your family. You think about 
nothing but your food—your breakfast and your cans of 
hot water. I suppose it’s nothing to you that Clare has 



342 


REPUTATION 


left home, run away—run away with a married man. But 
let me tell you it’s your fault, all your fault! It would 
never have happened if it had not been for you, your evil 
example.” 

Mrs. Piers’ voice rose, the tears were running down 
her face; she was a grotesque and pathetic object in her 
purple flannel dressing-gown, without her front teeth, 
lisping hysterically, totally unable to grapple with the 
present, harking back over the past. 

Ridiculous, ridiculous, and pathetic, too, to see a woman 
who looked like a dragoon, moved like a dragoon, shouted 
like a drill-sergeant at such times as her mouth was fully 
dressed, and yet had not the courage, the persistence of 
a mouse. 

‘‘And what are you going to do now? That’s what 
I want to know. It’s all your fault: it wouldn’t have 
happened if you had not run away with the Marquess, 
disgracing yourself—disgracing everybody. It’s you who 
are responsible; and what I want to know is, what are 
you going to do now ? ”. 

4 ‘Oh, damm it all! Catch the eight forty-eight and go 
after her if only you’ll give me a chance!” cried Claudia, 
finishing pinning up her hair, dropping her feet to the 
floor and crossing the room to tug at the bell-pull for her¬ 
self, thinking, “A-a-a-eh! The helplessness of these good 
practical people! ’ ’ and adding aloud, speaking rather more 
slowly than usual because of her irritation, “If only you’d 
be good enough to do something instead of standing there, 
talking—see about breakfast—order a trap of some sort.” 

“You mean you’re going after her?” 

“What else should I mean?” The maid came to the 
door and Claudia ordered hot water. “And I must have 
breakfast of some sort in twenty minutes,” she added, 
braced by the sense of her own excessive rudeness; then to 
her sister-in-law: “I’m going to strip now; you can go 
or you can stay, it’s nothing to me,” upon which Mrs. 
Piers gathered up her voluminous dressing-gown and fled 
from the room. 


CHAPTER VII 


Mrs. Piers did not show herself again; but Piers him¬ 
self came into breakfast, drank a cup of coffee and ate a 
couple of pieces of toast, under protest, as it were; without 
sitting down, as if to give point to the gravity of the 
situation, moving about the room with broken exclamations, 
heavy sighs and ejaculations of despair: fussy and restless 
and ineffective as a blue-bottle fly on a window-pane. 

“I suppose Ethel told you—no need to tell you, though— 
really, Claudia, really—words fail me. . . . Good God, to 
think of us sitting here—well, not sitting, speaking 
for myself at least not sitting—but eating and drinking, 
though how you can swallow anything with that unhappy 
child—I suppose He knows best—but why, why should a 
thing like this come upon us? . . . That’s what I ask my¬ 
self. . . . That’s what I find it difficult to submit to. . . . 
Tut, tut—a hard frost and the horses not even sharpened. 
Five and twenty to eight-—we ought to be starting in 
a quarter of an hour. ... I suppose you’ll have finished 
your breakfast by then—really, you women are beyond 
me! Another piece of bacon?—Of course, if you can 

eat, if you feel you can eat.A married man, too—a 

married man! That’s the dreadful part of it . . . with 
anyone else something might be arranged, but with a mar¬ 
ried man—my God! I think I’d better have a cup of coffee; 
it’s wrong to neglect oneself, one’s health given one and 

all_even in a crisis. ... A married man! And to write 

it, to actually write it down, put it into words: ‘As he’s 
a married man I don’t suppose you’ll ever want to see 
me again—’ but I suppose you were cognisant of that—and 
us receiving you here as if nothing, almost as if nothing, 
had happened—in a note upon her pin-cushion, why, the 


344 


REPUTATION 

housemaid might have found it! Dear, dear, there s the 
carriage coming round! Are you ready ? . . Where s 
my coat?” 

The parlour-maid came in with his coat and he got into 
it, feeling in all the pockets, patting them over, while the 
girl helped Claudia into hers, with a discreet palming 
away of what was probably the largest tip she had ever 
received in her life: given her, not because she was her 
master’s servant, but because she was her mistress’s; with 
Claudia buttoning up her collar, pulling on her gloves, 
thinking, “I’m cad enough to do that, even now, showing 
off in spite of everything!” and yet, at the same time, 
thinking of Clare a great deal more than anything else; 
flagellating herself for her own brutal selfishness in ignor¬ 
ing the appeal in that first letter. 

“Was it—I put it to you—does it seem to you fair and 
just—considering every thing—every thing ”—Piers ran on 
again as they got into the carriage, and he pulled the fur 
rug up over their knees, tucking it round at his side—“to 
come here and say nothing like that . . . nothing what¬ 
ever! Dear—dear—dear, how slippery it is, a hard frost 
last night! One really hardly knows what to think! One 
doesn’t want to be harsh, but it only shows what can hap¬ 
pen when people lose all sense of right and wrong as they 
seem to have done in these days. Though of course you 
. . . tut, tut, to think of it—twenty years ago! Only to 
think of it—twenty years ago! But really it does seem 
a sort of judgment . . . like the sins of the fathers—not 
exactly that, but similar to that. Though I do think, I 
do feel, that having suffered yourself—as you must have 
suffered if you have any conscience—when you knew what 
was going on . . .” 

“Oh, do be quiet, Piers!” Claudia put out her hand 
and let one window of the brougham down with a clash, 
for it was almost unendurably stuffy—and that was the 
difference between Papa and Piers, Papa had always hated 
a closed carriage—“I don’t supose you’ll believe me, but 


REPUTATION 


345 


I’ll give you my word for what it is worth: I knew noth¬ 
ing—nothing whatever until eleven o’clock yesterday 
morning. ’ ’ 

“My dear, how can you speak like that? Of course I 
believe you, if you say a thing—of course if you say it; 
though I must confess it does appear, as Ethel said, on 
the surface of things-” 

“And if you hadn’t been such a pair of idiots, if I 
hadn’t been such an idiot as to give in to you, this wouldn’t 
have happened,” she broke in; with, all the while, the 
thought of Tony running through her mind, weaving itself 
in and out with the thought of Clare. Anyhow Tony 
would be there, waiting upon the platform; even if the 
train had got in at four in the morning he would have been 
there, trust Tony for that. 

“Though after all, if only you hadn’t started it—if 
only you hadn’t set such an example ...” went on the 
Rector; for it seemed as though they were each of them 
talking without any real reference to what the other one 
said; though Claudia was silenced by this, which was al¬ 
together, and too dreadfully true. 

What was it that Clare had said in her letter? “If it 
hadn’t been for you ...” 

“I’d have come up to London with you, but there’s a 
diocesan meeting at eleven,” went on Piers. “And any¬ 
how I couldn’t do anything if I did come—what could I 
do in a delicate matter like this? . . . Best to leave things 
like this to the womenkind. . . . Anyhow, pray God you’ll 
get there in time . . . um—um . . . Oh, dear, dear, pray 
God you’ll get there in time!’ 

“In time for what?” cried Claudia, feeling driven; then, 
as he winced, with a little cry which was pathetic, though 
so like a sheep, she relented and said, pushing her hand into 
his, deep as a feather-bed: “ Don’t worry, old fellow; I ’ve 

got someone watching every train at Paddington.” 

But even this did not comfort him, for he cried out: 
“Not one of those private detective-agents, I hope? I 



346 


REPUTATION 


think—I really do think that would be worse than any¬ 
thing/ ’ while, when Claudia assured him that it was no 
agent but a friend, he was uneomforted; exclaiming with 
a good deal of truth and some knowledge of the world, 
which amused her through everything, so that she thought: 
‘‘I might use that.” 11 Good heavens, what will he think, 
if he’s a man—and what will she say, if she’s a woman?” 
while Claudia, glancing at him sideways, seeing his soft 
face—for he had a skin like his mother—pink with agita¬ 
tion, thought how queer it was to remember that she and 
Piers had once gone poaching together, running down 
hares on steep hillsides with foxhound puppies, for the 
late Rector had always walked foxhounds: and how im¬ 
possible to think of him, now, as ever having poached any¬ 
thing ; with any sort of desire for anything which was not 
his own by right. 

Half idly, and because there seemed nothing more to be 
said, at least nothing more which she desired to say, about 
Clare, she broke out, inconsequently enough, with: “Do 
you walk foxhounds, Piers?” Upon which her brother, 
evidently relieved to find himself started off upon a fresh 
subject, replied that he did not; giving a good many 
reasons for it, of which the chief seemed to be the fact that 
Ethel thought it wicked because they drank so much milk 
which might, with advantage, be given to the village 
children. 

With great self-control Claudia withheld her tongue from 
asking if the milk actually was—a two-puppy allowance— 
given to the children, and Piers ambled on and on, for 
the drive was a long one—to Claudia it had never seemed 
so long before, despite everything, for it is always much 
easier to bear things when one is alone—even touching 
upon her books, some of which he had read and not al¬ 
together approved of, saying: “You discuss things, if 
you’ll allow me to say so, my dear, which are much better 
left alone by novelists . . . should be left to better- 
informed people. Now, for example, that story about 


REPUTATION 


347 


those very queer people in the Balkans, you know. Come, 
come, Claudia, I wager you’ve never been to the Balkans.” 

“As it happens I have,” said Claudia, adding snappily: 
“And if I hadn’t I should think you’d be the last to find 
fault with it, considering the way in which all you people 
write about heaven,” for he was getting on her nerves; 
though they managed to keep the peace, to a certain ex¬ 
tent, to the last; parting with immense relief and some¬ 
thing like genuine affection. 

Piers’ last words, as he held his sister’s hand at the open 
carriage window of the railway carriage, were once again 
of Clare, spoken with more real feeling and sobriety than 
he had shown before—for fussiness is a sort of delirium, 
like all other forms of excitement: “We really have loved 
her . . . done our best. We couldn’t have done differently 
if she was our own child. We mayn’t have always under¬ 
stood; she said she wasn’t happy in that note ... but if 
you see her, try to make her realise that we do love her,” 
he said: adding, sadly and illuminatingly enough: “Why, 
she was the one bond between us!” while Claudia nodded 
and smiled reassuringly, for there was no time for words: 
leaning out of the window and waving her hand as the tram 
moved & off; thinking how very, very much more harm was 
done in the world, how much more selfishness displayed, by 
love than by hate; and how queer it was to think of the 
way in which people could be all sorts of things at once— 
—smug, self-sufficient and yet sad. 

The journey up to London seemed endless, while every 
word and movement of her three fellow-passengers ir¬ 
ritated Claudia almost beyond bearing. As they steamed 
into Paddington station and she craned out of the window, 
scanning the platform with the very few waiting figures— 
for it was not even yet the busy part of the day, though 
it seemed a lifetime since her sister-in-law had first awak¬ 
ened her—she saw Tony standing there almost as she left 
him, and thought, with an overwhelming access of despair: 
“Then she’s gone to Newhaven after all, and it’s too late 


348 


REPUTATION 


for anything! ’ ’ Impatient with him, too, because he stood 
there so quietly that it seemed almost his fault that he was 
alone; as if a more emotional mode of waiting might have 
accomplished something, brought Clare into being at 
his side. 

“Oh, but this is too awful!” she cried, jumping out of 
the carriage almost before the train stopped, with a gesture 
of such despair that she never even thought of shaking 
hands, of any sort of greeting. “To have failed again— 
and you standing there like that! It’s beyond everything! ’ ’ 

1 ‘ What did you expect me to do ? Run up and down the 
platform and yap? I suppose your bag’s in the carriage,” 
said Tony peaceably, and turned towards it: his calm 
putting of her in her place as though she were a small 
child, his words, his whole attitude so dumbfounding 
Claudia that she could only stand silent, staring at him, 
until he turned again, smiling, with the bag in one hand 
and suggested a hansom. 

“But Tony . . . Oh, of course you don’t know—of 
course you don’t know! Of course you haven’t heard— 
she’s gone; left home. I didn’t see her last night—good 
God, I don’t know why I was such a fool as not to insist 
upon seeing her—and then this morning—this morning it 
was too late. . . But all the time . . . Tony! how can 
you stand there like that? I didn’t know how sure I was 
that she’d come up to London, that you would meet her— 
that ...” They were racing towards the cab-stand as she 
spoke . . . she, herself a little in front, throwing the words 
over her shoulder; with, all the while, at the back of her 
consciousness, the realisation that she was running on ex¬ 
actly like Piers, so that what he had said and what she was 
saying seemed to flow into one stream: “Really, really, 
T on y—i never thought—I made sure, so sure, you’d 
meet her!” 

How could he meet her at Paddington if she had gone 
to Newhaven? She realised this, perfectly, but she could 


REPUTATION 


349 

not help herself. “If only, only you’d met her ... !” 

“But I did meet her,” said Tony. 

“You met her—you met her?” Claudia swung round 
so that she faced him, clutching at one arm, staring into his 
face—quiet as ever, but far less pale, with some sort of a 
queer light at the back of it. “You met her? You met 
her ? Then where on earth is she now ? ’ ’ 

“In your flat, of course. I’ve only just left her. I 
knew the trains up from Overton pretty well by heart by 
this time, you know,” he added, grinning, somehow rather 
shamefacedly; “and thought I’d better come along and 
meet you.” 

“But what has happened?” They had reached the cab- 
rank by now, and her bag was already in a hansom, one 
foot actually on the step when she took it down and flung 
round again towards Tony, struck by a new thought: 
“And what’s become of Styles? What on earth has be¬ 
come of Styles?” she cried; growing slowly conscious as 
she spoke of an extraordinarily taken-aback look upon 
Tony’s face; that look of self-reproach and amazement 
which comes to anyone stricken with the sudden realisa¬ 
tion that they have forgotten something of the utmost 
importance. 

“Good God, Claudia—Styles! Oh, I say, Styles! I—I 
forgot all about the chap.” 

“But wasn’t he here? Didn’t you see him?” 

“Oh yes, he was here right enough ... of course 
I saw him. There was hardly a soul about ... we were 
both meeting the same train and—and kicking our heels 
for half an hour. How could I help seeing the fellow?” 
His tone was almost aggressive. “And of course I knew 
him by sight, a jolly sight too well, too, having seen him 
about with—with her, you know, any amount of times; 
though he didn’t know me from Adam. . . . But 
all the same one can’t exactly assault a man because he 
happens to be waiting for the same train, can one? And 


350 


REPUTATION 


it was later on—I had to hang about until she—Miss 
Stevens, I mean—came . . . sort o' raison d'etre, you know 
—and then I—I ” 

Claudia was in the hansom by this time, leaning out 
of it with the doors open. “But then—then?” she cried 
impatiently as he came to a sudden full stop; “but what 
happened then, when Clare arrived? Tony, do hurry up 
and get in; you can tell me all about it as we go along-” 

“Then, oh then-” The young man's fair, thick- 

skinned face crimsoned slowly. “No, no, I won't come 
now, thanks awfully—got to get back to my club, no end of 
things to see about.” He bent forward and closed the 
doors of the hansom, fastening them carefully, frowning 
a little; then, as Claudia cried out in exasperation: “What 
I want to know is what happened to Styles?” he raised 
his head, and staring at her with a shamed and almost 
defiant glance, muttered something that sounded like: 
“The fact is we clean forgot about him,” and, lifting his 
hat, moved aside before she had time to get in so much 
as another word; leaving her with a feeling as though she 
had been suddenly and violently bludgeoned into insen¬ 
sibility by sheer astonishment; overcome by the complete 
impossibility of putting two and two together; for it seemed 
altogether and fantastically impossible that anyone could 
have forgotten Stjdes at such a moment. Why, Styles was 
the hub of the whole thing, the criminal in the case; and it 
was beyond belief that he had not shown himself in some 
way to be reckoned with, fought with, or at least intim¬ 
idated, elbowed aside; while as to Clare— Well, there was 
Clare's point of view; her infatuation, her set obstinacy, 
to be overcome; she herself to be wrested away. 

Surely Clare could not have allowed herself to be just 
led off. Surely, surely that man would not have allowed 
her to be so led; for cad as he was, he did not look like a 
fool, and a weak fool at that, the sort of person to be 
lightly brushed aside: for men who were “something in the 
city” would be nothing if they were like that. 



REPUTATION 


351 


The only conceivable thing which might have happened 
was that Clare had fainted and Tony been permitted to 
carry her off because the other man disliked a scene, feared 
a scandal; and that, indeed, seemed more true to type. 

It was only as she ran up her own steps that the sudden 
flashing realisation of that “we” came to Claudia: “we”— 
“we”—“we clean forgot about him”; though, of course, 
when Clare was in a faint she might be counted upon as 
incapable of thinking of anything for herself, and all that 
taken for granted. 

It had fixed itself so completely at this—an overcome 
Clare, though why on earth had not Tony said so?—that 
Claudia was not only taken aback but almost angry when 
Clare herself opened the door before she had time to get 
her latch-key into the lock; Clare with bright sparkling 
eyes and more colour in her face than she had ever seen 
before, throwing herself upon her aunt with an unusual 
display of feeling, clinging to her, kissing and hugging her. 

“You’re a nice one, you are!” said Claudia crossly; 
clinging, too, kissing her with a feeling of unspeakable 
relief; then, turning aside to pay the cabman, snap at the 
maid who was taking in her bag, unable to resist finding 
fault with something or other: “What are you doing? 
It looks as though we were moving house. 'Turning out 
the dining-room?’ What on earth do you want to turn out 
the dining-room for, to-day of all days?—And now, young 
woman, come upstairs and tell me all about it.” She 
turned to Clare, slipping her arm through hers, and then 
back upon the servant, *snipping-snapping—she could hear 
her own voice as surprising to herself as it was to the girl, 
accustomed to an easy, friendly mistress: ' ‘ What are all the 
windows shut for? The house is like a stuffy cupboard.” 

“It seemed so cold, miss. I had the window open on 
the landing, but the wind-” 

“Yes—yes—it’s after the fresh air, I suppose, and I’m 

tired.” 

Feeling herself rebuked by the hurt expression on the 



352 


REPUTATION 


servant's face, Claudia began to go upstairs, very slowly, 
for she was indeed tired—tired for nothing, as it seemed; 
while her legs ached as though she had walked to London. 
At the first landing she paused to slip off her heavy fur 
coat, and thought, apropos of nothing: ‘ ‘ I do wish people 

would stop bothering!" then pulled herself together with: 
“Thank Heaven, the child’s safe!’’ and slipped her arm 
back again through Clare’s, with a laughing ‘ 1 My dear, I’m 
breaking up; there’s no doubt about it. ’ ’ 

Once in the drawing-room, the girl turned round, facing 
her. She was really very beautiful; Claudia wondered 
that she had never before realised how beautiful, or was it 
that this was just her moment? There was something in 
the way she held herself, too. This thought came to her 
later in one clear picture with that something different 
about Tony, his expression and pose: the effect of bobbing- 
up so altogether alien to both of them, suddenly and mu¬ 
tually achieved. 

“Claude, I want to tell you—I must tell you.’’ Clare, 
half laughing, half crying, speaking in that odd, rushed 
way, had hold of her aunt’s hands. 

“Yes—yes—dear—I know ... I know,’’ Claudia broke 
in upon her; so full of what she had screwed herself up 
to say that she had no time to listen to anyone else. For 
once we are determined upon an orgy of confession, or 
self-sacrifice, we do not in the least care whether it is nec¬ 
essary, whether it will be welcome or not. 

She poured it out now—beating Clare down, sluicing her 
over with it—the whole story of that elopement which she 
had been determined to reveal since she first read the girl’s 
letter only the morning before—and how incredulous that 
seemed!—pulling her down upon the sofa at her side, com¬ 
pletely swamping her tentative, reiterated: “But I want 
to tell you, Claude—I must tell you-’’ 

“Look here, Clare, I must tell you—no, no, it’s I who 
must tell you. It’s more important than anything. I 
ought to have told you long ago—would have done, if 


REPUTATION 


353 


I’d had the faintest idea what you were thinking of, what 
you meant to do. And you were wrong there—you were 
wrong—you ought to have told me; you ought to have 
given me a chance. That’s the worst of you young people, 
you don’t give us elder ones a chance: just listen to what 
everyone says, never consult anyone. But that’s the end 
of that, you’ll know now—though goodness gracious, 
what a fright you’ve given me—tearing down to Leesden 
and all! . . . Oh, my dear, I don’t wonder you couldn’t 
stand it—the smell of furniture polish and that Ethel per¬ 
son. If I’d only known—anyhow, you’ll not go back 
there, my darling; you’ll stay here with me, always, al¬ 
ways. And you must never, never think of doing any¬ 
thing like that again—running away with anyone, I mean, 
because—because, you see—because . . . well, I just 
didn’t. They all thought I did. That’s the worst of old 
people—I mean the generation before mine—they always 
took things so for granted, thought the worst; but I 
didn’t.” 

“Didn’t—didn’t what?” 

She had both Clare’s hands in hers, but the girl drew 
back a little now, sitting sideways on the sofa, staring at 
her in a bewildered way; and yet with a half-smile upon 
her lips, as though the better part of her thoughts were 
elsewhere. 

“Run away with Lord Blagden. Look here, Clare, it 
was like this: I did start off with him, and we . . . but 
not run away with him in that sort of way. 

“Oh, but everybody says—everybody!” Clare’s sharp 
cry was not to be beaten down, though Claudia heard her 
own voice still running on and on in a torrent of detail. 
She was even telling her all about Pickles, the rough cross¬ 
ing, landing at Dieppe; slicing in between it with what 
came much later, or earlier; Pickles’ death, though they 
never had the decency to tell her about it—that beast 
Knowles driving them into things, Blagden and herself— 
and, yet, not really and completely into them—not because 


354 


REPUTATION 


she thought it was wrong, but because it seemed too stupid 
—the railway accident and the young person in Paris, at 
least she supposed that she was young—the way in which 
no one would believe what she said—“And that’s too aw¬ 
ful, like smashing in one’s face against a blank wall, com¬ 
ing upon it suddenly, unbelievably—that people can re¬ 
fuse to believe you—what had happened when she got 
home—the things that she had thought—the things Blag- 
den had said—the way people took it all for granted; 
breaking it up with the reiterated: “Girls think they’re 
in love,” and again: “But I didn’t really—I really 

didn’t-” Not meaning love at all, but what everybody 

seemed to think was so much more important than love. 
And all the while with her second, critical self, standing 
back, thinking how almost incredible it seemed that this 
Claudia Waring, a novelist, too, should be making such 
a poor, involved thing of her own story. 

“But everybody says—everybody!” cried Clare again, 
cutting in upon the first pause. “Why, they all know 
about it. Of course you ran away with him—of course. 
You can’t have forgotten! What is wrong with you, 
Claude? Why do you want to pretend to me like this 
now—now, when it doesn’t really matter twopence?” 

“But it does matter—it does matter. I went, but I came 
back. Don’t you understand that? I went, but I came 
back,” she repeated it loudly and slowly, with a sense of 
exasperation beyond all words. 

“I know—I know, of course: everyone knows that you 
came back. But . . . Oh, Claude, I want to tell you-” 

“But don’t you see? Can’t you see? I came back be¬ 
fore—before . . . Oh, you idiot! . . . Well, I came back 
before ...” Claudia broke off with that balked feeling 
which is like coming up to a jump and feeling it, quite 
suddenly, impossible to surmount; then began again: 

“We started in the early morning and went to Newhaven 
and crossed straight away. We—we . . . Oh, don’t [you 
understand, Clare? ... We didn’t stay anywhere. I 




REPUTATION 


355 


thought I cared enough, but I suppose I didn't; he was so 
much older, you see—ever so much older. And he went to 
sleep in the train. It was daylight. We didn't—didn't 
. . . Well, there wasn’t any night—he just went to sleep 
—with his mouth open. And I couldn't stand it: I don't 
know why, but I couldn't stand it! You know how you 
get suddenly, so that you can't stand a thing. He was 
talking in his sleep of some other woman, but I didn't 
mind that—it was his mouth being open, and he grunted 
and looked ... Oh, of course I didn't love him, or I 
wouldn't have minded anything. Any more than you love 
Mr. Styles, if you'll only wait a little, give yourself time, 
listen to reason. Anyhow, when the train stopped at a 
station I just got out with my dog and my bag and he¬ 
wed, he just went on. ’' She ended with a feeling as though 
she were a talking marionette which had suddenly run 
down. 

“You got out of the train and left him? Without tell¬ 
ing him—without saying anything?” said Clare; while 
her voice sounded so shocked that Claudia hurried on, al¬ 
most as though she were defending herself. 

“Yes, I did—I got out . . . Anything is better than to 
go on running away with a man one doesn’t love; that’s 
why I’m telling you about it now. It was ages before 
another train back to Dieppe stopped there; they all went 
flying past. I remember how I felt waiting on the plat¬ 
form_a tiny station with no sort of shelter, and seeing 

them fly past.” 

It seemed as though Clare must pity her here; but as 
she said nothing, Claudia went on: “After a long while 
I went into the village and got some coffee, and they gave 
a bone to Pickles; but I was wet through, and it was the 
middle of the night when I got back to Dieppe. There was 
a little hotel by the station—I don't know why they took 
me in, but they did. I was tired out and sort of stupefied 
I must have got a chill somehow, for I was frightfully ill 
afterwards. Anyhow, I stayed on there for several 


356 


REPUTATION 


three or four—days, without bothering much about any¬ 
thing. I can’t remember thinking what I was going to 
do; it must have all been more of a strain than I realised, 
though one never thought about nerves or that sort of 
thing in those days. . . . Anyhow, I suppose I took it for 
granted that I would just go home. I know I wandered 
about the town and saw all I could, even then, and liked 
being alone. There was a fair in the square in front of the 
cathedral, with a merry-go-round and stalls; I remember 
that. Then I got scared about my money, and went back 
to England. I don’t know how I did it, or why I did it— 
why I did anything. When one’s very young it seems that 
one can’t see things in relation to one another: that one’s 
own place in the world is so sure and fixed. Anyhow, I 
do want you to understand.” 

“But all the same, you know, you did run away with 
him.” 

There was a sort of fixed obstinacy in Clare’s voice, 
though still, with it all, that look of having something 
at the back of herself which pleased her beyond words; 
so that Claudia thought: “She still imagines she’s in love 
with him,” starting to go back over it all again, with a 
bald and ridiculous insistence, which shamed her even 
then, and still more later. 

“But you must see I was alone in France; there was 
nothing—nothing. . . . Look here, my dear, of course I ran 
away with him ...” Oh, but Clare was stupid, stupid! 
It was ridiculous, and wrong too, for any girl to be as 
innocent as she seemed to be. “What I want you to real¬ 
ise is that nothing—well, nothing of that sort—nothing 
happened. I don’t know how to put it to you: I don’t 
know how much young girls know nowadays, and of course 
you’ve lived in the country; but what I mean is-” 

Once again Claudia seemed to hear her own voice run¬ 
ning on and on; like Piers’, like her mother’s. The voice 
of the entire family; not so much in its tone, as its senti¬ 
ments, its platitudes; a sort of reversion to the original 



357 


REPUTATION 


type against which she was too tired, too stupefied, to 
struggle—the beginning of that inevitable repetition of 
generations: “It is so difficult with a young girl; only 
the moment I heard that you were going to run away 
with a married man, I felt I must try and make you under¬ 
stand; that I-” 

“But of course I understand,’’ broke m Clare, with her 
eyes, very grave and a little puzzled, full upon her aunt s 
face. “One must know things if one lives in the coun¬ 
try_Besides, I’ve heard the other nurses talking. Only 

to have left him like that, it does seem 


“What?” 

“Well oh, I don’t know; pretty mean, doesn’t it?” 

said the girl. Then as Claudia gasped, amazed into 
silence, she added, quite sweetly and reasonably, yet with a 
sort of condemnatory coldness: “When he had paid for 
your ticket and all, you know—not to even say good-bye. 

They were at either end of the sofa by now, apart m 
actual fact as well as in spirit; while it seemed to Claudia 
that Clare looked more mature and yet younger than she 
had ever done: come to earth as it were; much more li e 
other girls—robbed of that elusive wood-nymph air. 

“Besides, I do think you oughtn’t to have gone on let¬ 
ting people believe,” she began again after a long pause; 
“well, believe the things they did believe. There was 
disappointment in the girl’s voice, and, actually—yes 
without doubt, something like patronage. You see, it s 
like this, Claude; we all thought you were so wonderful 
having-having-well, sort of weathered tlnngs-all the 
people I know, people of our generation—that any amount 
of them might have been silly enough to think that they 
could do the same thing because you did it. Look at me, 

f °“Y-iv-ves e . . .” said Claudia, and looked at her niece 
humbly, without a word to say for herself ; while there 
was a long silence, broken by the housemaid coming in 
to ask her for the key of her bag. 


358 


REPUTATION 


After she had gone it seemed that Clare’s mood had 
changed, for she was smiling again. 1 ‘Though, after all, 
I believe I’m glad,” she said with a little sigh of relief. 
“Tony was awfully upset—it will make all the difference 
to Tony.” 

“How all the difference to Tony?” Claudia was al¬ 
together too deadened to so much as notice the Christian 
name, which meant a great deal from Clare. 

“Well, he didn’t like it. He—well, he was awfully 
upset. I never saw him so upset. ’ ’ 

“Didn’t like what?” 

“You having run away with that old Lord Blagden.” 

“I didn’t know he knew.” 

“Look here, Claude, I am so sorry.” Clare was sud¬ 
denly confused, full of contrition, her hard apartness 
all broken up: “It was my fault. I thought he knew. 
I took it for granted he knew—why, everybody knew, 
even the nurses in the nursing home.” The girl’s face 
crimsoned; she leant towards her aunt again and took her 
hand. “It sounds so beastly—it sounds like telling. But 
it wasn’t that, really it wasn’t that. It just seemed— 
well, to explain things. But when I saw he didn’t know, 
took it like that-” 

“Like what?” 

“Well, shocked. ... I felt awful—absolutely awful, 
as though I’d given |you away. But now-” 

“Where was that?” 

“In the cab, coming here. You see, I had to speak of 
it, because—because, you see, it did sort of explain things. ’ ’ 

“What sort of things?” 

“Well—well—me thinking of running away and all. 
And, of course, I thought he’d think it was perfectly 
splendid of you, in the same way that I did.” 

“And didn’t he?” enquired Claudia dryly. 

“No ... no ... to tell the truth, he didn’t. I think 
because of me—putting things into my head, you know. 

. . . Oh, Claude, I am sorry! But men are old fash- 




REPUTATION 


359 


ioned, one forgets . . Clare’s lips were trembling, 
the colour came and went in her delicate face: it seemed 
as though, in some way, she did not know what to think, 
how to feel. 

There was a long silence between them. Claudia got 
up and poked the fire into a blaze, raised one hand and 
began to straighten the ornaments upon the mantelshelf; 
then dropped it with a funny little laugh. 

‘ * What are you laughing at V ’ 

“We all do that—we Warings; straighten the things 
upon the mantelpiece when we don’t know what to say. 
Lord! what queer things family traits are! 

“I want to tell you,” began Clare; but her aunt broke 
in upon her, overcome by a sudden thought: 

“I’d forgotten again! Good heavens, if I hadn’t gone 
and forgotten again. ... I never knew anything so queer 
as that!” 

“I want to tell you, Claude-” 

“Yes—yes, that’s it; do tell me. What did become 
of your Mr. Styles?” 

“Mr. Styles?” Clare’s eyes widened as she drew her¬ 
self very upright, her hands pressed down at either side 
of her upon the sofa, and staring at her aunt. “Mr. 
Styles!” 

“Yes, of course, Mr. Styles.” 

“Oh ... oh ... of him? . . . become of him?” 

“Yes, of him. It was him you were going to run 
away to go to Paris with; at least, so I gathered from 
your letter, and I believe he was at the station to meet 
you.” 

Claudia was beginning to be angry, overcome by a sus¬ 
picion that in some way or other Clare was trying to 
^gggjyg her. 

“I suppose he was there,” said the girl, still staring. 
“Yes ... yes ... I know he was there; Tony said he 
was.” She dropped her head at this, so low that Claudia 
could see no more than the fair coils on the top of it, 



360 


REPUTATION 

and repeated pleating up a little fold of her dress in her 
slim white fingers: “Oh yes, he was there all right. 

“But, my dear, didn’t you see him for yourself! Why, 
you must have seen him! ’ ’ cried Claudia, completely 
mystified; breaking off as the girl flung up her head and 
looked at her with that astonishing effect of brilliant 
dark eyes in a face which was, at that moment, as white as 
paper. 

“But I didn’t,” she said rather defiantly. “He put 
out his hands and said ‘Clare,’ and I—well—I went to 
him.” 

“Who—Styles?” 

“No, of course not. Claude, how can you? Tony.’ 

“You went to Tony?” 

“Yes—yes, that was it.” Clare seemed to be trying 
to speak as though she could not quite remember what 
had happened. 

“But what did Styles say?” 

“I’m not really sure. I ... Oh, yes, we were going 
to the cab, and I know he did say something—I think it 
was to Tony—I’m not sure, but I think it was something- 
something that sounded like ‘Your rubber,’ I believe. 
But I don’t think Tony heard him—he didn’t answer; 
he was telling me—something.” 

“And then?” 

“Well, you see, Claude, it didn’t matter; nothing mat¬ 
tered then.” 

“But when?” 

“Why, when I found that Tony really cared for me, 
always had cared; only he hadn’t liked to say anything 
until now, because ... I suppose you know that Blagden 
boy’s engaged to be married to a daughter of Lord 
Festing’s. Tony saw him last night; he says he’s most 
tremendously happy. . . It is such a load off my mind, 
Claude, to think ... to think we’re all happy now. You 
are glad, aren’t you—you are glad? You always wanted it 
. . . you always liked Tony, and he is so fond of you—you 


REPUTATION 


361 


dear, you!” Clare had jumped to her feet; all her stiff¬ 
ness was gone, her arms were round her aunt, her eager 
flushed face close to hers. . . . ‘‘Why, it’s like a fairy-tale 
isn’t it?” 

“Yes,” said Claudia a little blankly; and repeated 
“Like a fairy-tale,” with a sudden odd, sympathetic 
picture of Mr. Styles going back to the wife who had 
‘ ‘ never understood him ”; of herself and the shaded win¬ 
dows in the back drawing-room: “I shall have to pull 
down the blinds here too,” she thought rather bitterly. 
And then: 

“If it isn’t just like that Lathom man to be at the other 
end of the world when I really do want him.” 

“Of course, it must seem very sudden to you,” Clare 
was saying. “It’s different for us; for of course we 
have cared, both of us, all the time, though we didn t 
know it—I mean neither knew the other cared: and it’s 
difficult, it must be difficult for anyone who isn’t married, 
like you, Claude, to understand- 

“As if you were married, you chit, you!” 

“Ah, but I’m going to be,” said Clare, dimpling and 
smiling; looking so very mysterious, secure, tucked up, 
so very unlike her usual self, that her aunt could have 
smacked her: thinking Mr. Lathom was right after all; 
they don’t really care twopence for anyone apart from 
their own generation,’’ then: “I’ll write and tell him so.’’ 

“And of course I’d hate to be an old maid—it’s different 
for you, ’ ’ said Clare. 


i 


EPILOGUE 

July, 1922 


LAST CHAPTER 


It was a still, hot day in the last week of May, the one 
summer month of that year: so hot that the actual sun¬ 
shine seemed to be netted in a haze of gold and grey, 
while there was nothing more distinct or clear-cut than 
is to be seen in a pastel drawing. 

The garden at Leesden Rectory was absolutely still, the 
trees unstirred, the birds silent; a bunch of golden bees 
hung above the hives, close and motionless as though 
pressed against each other for support, upborne upon 
the warm air. 

“It looks as though they were going to hive,” said 
Claudia, and paused a moment to drag her thoughts back, 
languidly and indifferently enough, to what she and her 
great niece had been engaged upon a moment before— 
the desultory discussion of the fashion of men’s clothes; 
and even so she strayed off again: “There are some 
strawberries ripe already—how I adore the scent of them, 
a sort of frubbsy sweetness like all the summers that ever 
were.” 

“And how I adore the taste!” said Claudia the third. 
“I’m really cultivating the art of eating because it’s the 
one lasting pleasure of life, and one must have something 
to fall back upon in old age,” she added; and licked her 
lips with an ostentatious display of greed. “Strawberries! 
Ue-u-u!” 

“My grandmother used to say—your great-great-grand- 
mother—good Lord, how the generations pile up!—that 
I a only one virtue: I wasn’t greedy.” 

“Poor darling, what you missed!—Look here, I know 
what I like a man in, more than anything else—white 
flannels—or perhaps hunting kit. What do you think, 

365 


366 


REPUTATION 


eh, Snifflecums?” added the girl, rolling over the Pekinese 
which lay panting at her feet; poking it wickedly in the 
stoutest part of its body with the point of her toe, while 
it looked up at her with bulging, outraged eyes. 

“I must say I do like a dog to be a dog,” remarked 
Claudia in a disgusted voice; and then, leaning further 
back in her deck-chair—snuggling her back into it, her 
hands clasped behind her neck—she picked up that 
dropped thread once more; though it meant nothing, led to 
nothing. 

“Anyhow, men don’t look half so smart nowadays. I 
suppose clothes are more comfortable, but they’re so sloppy; 
look as though they ’re made by their mothers ’ dressmakers. 
I remember when men wore Chesterfields-” 

“Chesterfields!” The word was echoed with a gurgle 
of laughter, fresh as running water—and to think that 
in Claudia’s day women were not supposed to laugh, 
let alone with their mouths open, only smile: to keep 
your mouth shut and your eyes steadily fixed in front 
of you—for “no man ever thinks of speaking to a really 
nice girl unless she looks about her”—your arms tight 
to your side in walking, that was the thing: to be trussed 
and remain trussed in mind and body. 

“Chesterfields! My dear, you’re mad! Chesterfields 
are sofas; the idea of wearing a Chesterfield!” Dia— 
for that was what it had come to—threw back her head 
and laughed again. 

“They used to be coats.” 

“No—! no! What a scream; and ‘used to be’! Se¬ 
riously, I must cure you of that, Claude, darling: whenever 
you say that I think of the young lady called Isabel who 
automatically changed to Wasabel, And did your 
precious John Lathom come courting in a Chesterfield?— 
diddums ? ’ ’ 

“No . . .” said Claudia, with her eyes fixed as though 
upon something very far away. “No.” 

“What screams people must have been in those days!” 



REPUTATION 


367 


The youngest Claudia, aged eighteen, stretched out one 
bare arm across the garden table, took a cigarette from 
the silver box lying there, lighting it from the one 
which she had just finished: drew both feet up on the 
bench where she was sitting, and clasping her arms 
around her knees, gazed up into the thick, dim green 
of the yew arbour; crossed and re-crossed by a lace-work 
of cobwebs, jewelled with bright vermilion berries. She 
wore a dress like a chemise, of pink and white striped 
silk, through which her small breasts showed with perfect 
distinctness; a dress with as little to it as possible, low 
at the neck, with practically no sleeves: upon her feet 
were white silk stockings and flat white canvas shoes with 
rope soles, tied on with sandals of tape. Her thick, 
burnished, crinkly gold hair was cut short, standing out 
across the back of her neck like the clipped base of a corn- 
shock; her brown eyes were screwed up lazily and good- 
temperedly; despite the heat, she looked as though she 
had just come out of a bath. 

“Good Lord! how much jollier it is here since Aunt 
Ethel died—mercy she was ‘tuk.’ ” 

“You shouldn’t say that.” 

“I don’t see why I shouldn’t say it if it’s true.” 

‘ ‘ It doesn’t sound nice. ’ ’ 

“Nice be hanged! Sorry, Claude dear, but you are so 
Victorian—in streaks, you know.” 

“It’s my period,” said Claudia dryly; “and after all, 
it’s not so far back as the pose taken up by most of your 
friends—priding themselves on being so modern, with all 
the—well, etceteras of the Roman Empire.” It was queer 
how, in talking to this chit of eighteen, Clare’s daughter, 
Claudia Lathom never, for one moment, stopped to sift 
her words, sort out those fit for the young person. 

“They’re a pretty putrid lot,” said the girl placidly. 
“Though, after all, they’re not so bad as they sound; 
none of us are, you know; any more than you were as 
good as you sounded—you just couldn’t have been.” 


368 


REPUTATION 


She swung herself a little, rocking to and fro—while 
the tiny flecks of light, filtering down through the boughs, 
patterned her short, vivid face, the small aquiline nose 
and full lips—taking out her cigarette and rounding her 
mouth to make rings, which floated up whole and complete 
against the velvety, unstirred darkness of the yew. 

“I simply adore this arbour—sounds Elizabethan, 
doesn't it?—an arbour—‘a pleached arbour'—I love the 
light of it, too—a green bath of air. Rather nice, that; 
I 'll make you a present of it, Claude; It 'll come in handy 
for one of your books. . . . Well, I suppose I must go; 
there's that Staines man coming to play tennis. Pretty 
rotten when there’s no one but a middle-aged curate, and 
married at that, for a girl to play about with. But there 
you are, that's the result of the war; and me with none 
of the fun of it either." 

She rose and stretched herself, opened her mouth, 
yawned and grimaced. “ Mother and Dad, the .curate and 
I—a four! Doesn't sound over-exhilarating, does it? 
Oh, well, it's all in the day's work, I suppose. Come 
along, Claude, come along now, you'll lose your figure if 
you go on sitting there." She jerked her great-aunt 
to her feet with a wirelike arm beneath hers; 4 ‘I'll run 
you round the garden before I go; there's nothing like 
a little exercise for the aged." 

4 ‘I'm just on sixty," said Claudia, tragically defiant. 

“And look it, too!" mocked her youngest namesake; 
brushing her face with her own cool cheek, the flick of 
an eyelash—“a butterfly kiss" she called it. 

They moved to the front of the arbour, and stood in the 
deep green doorway shoulder to shoulder, gazing out 
upon the kitchen garden: the feathery mass of asparagus, 
the cool round globes of cabbage, flanked with early stocks 
and white pinks, deep blue Jacob's Ladder and crimson 
bergamot. 

“I love this place now—but, my word, how I hated it 
when Aunt Ethel was alive!" said Dia. “She was always 


REPUTATION 


369 


poking at one; wouldn’t have let me call my soul my 
own if I hadn’t put down a firm foot, shown her I wouldn’t 
have it—such impertinence, interfering with me! Piers 
now, Piers is a dear old thing—a sort of cross between a 
sheep and a tea-cosy. I say, look here, Claude . . 

The girl flung round suddenly, .staring at her great-aunt 
with crinkled-up eyes. 

1 ‘You’ll be a mass of wrinkles by the time you’re thirty, 
if you go about bareheaded in a sun like this,” said 
Claudia, her own broad-brimmed straw hat dipping over 
her nose, finely aquiline as ever. 

“Oh, hang the wrinkles What was I going to say? . . . 
Oh, I know. I often meant to ask you. . . . Why were 
you never here during that Ethel woman’s time? ^It 
would have made all the difference—made it bearable. 

“She didn’t approve of me, you know.” 

“Why didn’t ‘approve?’—Isn’t that an awful phrase? 
—to ‘approve,’ to not ‘approve’—the sort of thing one 
lumps up with ‘resignation.’ But what on earth had 
you done, you poor darling?” 

“I ran away, you know, with—with a married man. 

“But, why-? Good Lord!” The youngest Claudia 

stared at her, wide-eyed for once, her whole face alive 
with laughter: “My dear!—but that was all back in 
the dark ages, hundreds of years before I was born; and 
anyhow. . . . Well, look here, it was your pigeon, wasn’t 
it?” 


THE END 













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